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Shakespeare Quotes

Browse 327 quotes about Shakespeare.

Shakespeare Quotes

“In Old English, thou (thee, thine, etc.) was singular and you was plural. But during the thirteenth century, you started to be used as a polite form of the singular - probably because people copied the French way of talking, where vous was used in that way. English then became like French, which has tu and vous both possible for singulars; and that allowed a choice. The norm was for you to be used by inferiors to superiors - such as children to parents, or servants to masters, and thou would be used in return. But thou was also used to express special intimacy, such as when addressing God. It was also used when the lower classes talked to each other. The upper classes used you to each other, as a rule, even when they were closely related. So, when someone changes from thou to you in a conversation, or the other way round, it conveys a different pragmatic force. It will express a change of attitude, or a new emotion or mood.”

ShakespeareWilliam ShakespeareOld English
Author:David Crystal
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“O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities: For nought so vile that on the earth doth live But to the earth some special good doth give, Nor aught so good but strain’d from that fair use Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse: Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied; And vice sometimes by action dignified. Within the infant rind of this small flower Poison hath residence and medicine power: For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part; Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart. Two such opposed kings encamp them still In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will; And where the worser is predominant, Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.”

PlaySceneShakespeareWilliam ShakespeareRomeo And JulietFriar Laurence
Book:Romeo and Juliet
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“You can quiz me on Petrarch, Medea, Shakespeare or Dante, I know them all, and I’m sorry, but they’ve all gone wrong. Dumb glorified men, writing words about love and life as if they knew. As far as I’m concerned, they didn’t make it out alive either, so I’m sure as hell not going to go to them for advice.”

LoveLifeWritingShakespeareDanteMedeaPetrarch
Book:Empty Roads & Broken Bottles: in search for The Great Perhaps
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“The trouble with you, Charles, is that basically you despise women, whereas I, in spite of some appearances to the contrary, do not." "I don't despise women. I was in love with all Shakespeare's heroines before I was twelve." "But they don't exist, dear man, that's the point. They live in the never-never land of art, all tricked out in Shakespeare's wit and wisdom, and mock us from there, filling us with false hopes and empty dreams. The real thing is spite and lies and arguments about money.”

HumorRelationshipsFictionDialogueIris MurdochMisogynyShakespeareDisillusionedThe Sea The SeaReality Vs Expectations
Book:The Sea, The Sea
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“Tis like she comes to speak of Cassio’s death, The noise was high. Ha! No more moving? Still as the grave. Shall she come in? Were ’t good? I think she stirs again—No. What’s best to do? If she come in, she’ll sure speak to my wife— My wife! my wife! what wife? I have no wife. Oh, insupportable! Oh, heavy hour! Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse Of sun and moon, and that th' affrighted globe Should yawn at alteration.”

ShakespeareOthelloAct 5 Scene 2
Book:Othello
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“So I close this long reflection on what I hope is a not-too-quaveringly semi-Semitic note. When I am at home, I will only enter a synagogue for the bar or bat mitzvah of a friend's child, or in order to have a debate with the faithful. (When I was to be wed, I chose a rabbi named Robert Goldburg, an Einsteinian and a Shakespearean and a Spinozist, who had married Arthur Miller to Marilyn Monroe and had a copy of Marilyn’s conversion certificate. He conducted the ceremony in Victor and Annie Navasky's front room, with David Rieff and Steve Wasserman as my best of men.) I wanted to do something to acknowledge, and to knit up, the broken continuity between me and my German-Polish forebears. When I am traveling, I will stop at the shul if it is in a country where Jews are under threat, or dying out, or were once persecuted. This has taken me down queer and sad little side streets in Morocco and Tunisia and Eritrea and India, and in Damascus and Budapest and Prague and Istanbul, more than once to temples that have recently been desecrated by the new breed of racist Islamic gangster. (I have also had quite serious discussions, with Iraqi Kurdish friends, about the possibility of Jews genuinely returning in friendship to the places in northern Iraq from which they were once expelled.) I hate the idea that the dispossession of one people should be held hostage to the victimhood of another, as it is in the Middle East and as it was in Eastern Europe. But I find myself somehow assuming that Jewishness and 'normality' are in some profound way noncompatible. The most gracious thing said to me when I discovered my family secret was by Martin, who after a long evening of ironic reflection said quite simply: 'Hitch, I find that I am a little envious of you.' I choose to think that this proved, once again, his appreciation for the nuances of risk, uncertainty, ambivalence, and ambiguity. These happen to be the very things that 'security' and 'normality,' rather like the fantasy of salvation, cannot purchase.”

ReligionAtheismSecurityIndiaSalvationIslamIraqDebateGermanyTemplesMiddle EastShakespearePolandNormalityAncestorsJewsEastern EuropeIstanbulEinsteinAntisemitismMoroccoSpinozaTunisiaPragueMarilyn MonroeBudapestJewishnessEritreaArthur MillerKurdish PeopleSynagoguesDesecrationDamascusJewish QuestionMartin AmisRabbisReligious ConversionDavid RieffAnnie NavaskyBar And Bat MitzvahBest ManRobert GoldburgSteve WassermanVictor Saul Navasky
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
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“Status is created by other people's attitude towards you. Titania has a retinue and it's the people around her that give her the status. It's like--was it Tyrone Guthrie who said it to Ian Holm when he was playing Henry V? 'Don't let anyone come within four feet of you.' It's all to do with how other people act in relation to you. That's what gives you the power.”

ActorsPowerShakespeareActressMidsummer Nights DreamTitania
Book:Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent
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“La generalización me incomoda, pero siempre lo he pensado de las tragedias: la complejidad verbal, las dimensiones sicológicas, las exigencias interpretativas que hacen que un espectador no pueda nunca asir la implicaciones completas de lo que se le presenta, y deba volver una y otra vez sobre el texto: todo eso me ha permitido durante mucho tiempo pensar en un Shakespeare cansado que un día, ya al final de su vida, se topa con la primera traducción del Quijote y considera, demasiado tarde, todo lo que habría podido hacer con esta nueva forma.”

ShakespeareNovelaQuijote
Book:Viajes con un mapa en blanco
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“Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines, And too often is his gold complexion dimm'd: And every fair from fair sometimes declines, By chance or natures changing course untrimm'd; By thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this and this gives life to thee.”

LoveYouthShakespeare
Book:Shakespeare's Sonnets
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“The Birnam Oak by Stewart Stafford Medieval guardian, limpet oak, Reinforced branches, sunlit soak, Gnarled limbs in supplicant pose, A statuesque deity in thorny repose. Set up tent 'neath a canopy deep, Where my pilgrim forbears sleep, Midges swarming campfire's glow, And drowsy me, to slumber go. May roots prosper far from sight, Defying storm, flame, chainsaw's bite, Give verdant breath to creation's plan. Until Earth falls from human hand. © 2024, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”

TreeShakespeareOakOak TreeNature PoetryMacbethNature PoemNature PoemsNature Poems Irish PoetBirnam Wood
Author:Stewart Stafford
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