Quotes from William Shakespeare

We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

Conscience doth make cowards of us all.

The breaking of so great a thing should make A greater crack: the round world Should have shook lions into civil streets, And citizens to their dens.

How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world.

They do not love that do not show their love.

I can see he's not in your good books,' said the messenger. 'No, and if he were I would burn my library.

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

Presume not that I am the thing I was; For God doth know, so shall the world perceive, That I have turn'd away my former self; So will I those that kept me company.

I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow, than a man swear he loves me.

Men at some time are masters of their fates. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.

What's done cannot be undone.

Love is not love which alters it when alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove: O no! It is an ever fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken; it is the star to every wandering bark whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass come: Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out, even to the edge of doom.

In time we hate that which we often fear.

Let me be that I am and seek not to alter me.

What's past is prologue.

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

And yet,to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays.

O teach me how I should forget to think (1.1.224)

Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.

Do you bite your thumb at us, sir? SAMPSON [Aside to Gregory]: Is the law of our side, if I say ay? GREGORY [Aside to Sampson]: No. SAMPSON: No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I bite my thumb, sir.

Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince; And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.

Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs; Being purg'd, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes; Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears; What is it else? A madness most discreet, A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.

When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.