Shakespeare Quotes and Sonnets

Coriolanus, Act 5, Scene 3, Lines 182-189

Sat, 22 Dec 2012 15:01:32 -0700

Coriolanus: Oh, mother, mother!

What have you done? Behold, the heavens do ope,

The gods look down, and this unnatural scene

They laugh at. Oh my mother, mother! Oh!

You have won a happy victory to Rome;

But for your son — believe it, oh, believe it! —

Most dangerously you have with him prevailed,

If not most mortal to him. But let it come.

Sonnet 154

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 15:19:42 -0700

The little love god lying once asleep

Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,

Whilst many nymphs that vowed chaste life to keep

Came tripping by; but in her maiden hand

The fairest votary took up that fire

Which many legions of true hearts had warmed,

And so the general of hot desire

Was, sleeping, by a virgin hand disarmed.

This brand she quenchèd in a cool well by,

Which from Love’s fire took heat perpetual,

Growing a bath and healthful remedy

For men diseased; but I, my mistress’ thrall,

Came there for cure, and this by that I prove:

Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love.

Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 7, Lines 167-184

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 22:44:17 -0700

Queen: There is a willow grows askant the brook,

That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;

Therewith fantastic garlands did she make

Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,

That liberal shepherds did give a grosser name,

But our cold mads do dead men’s fingers call them.

There on their pendent boughs her crownet weeds

Clamb’ring to hang, an envious sliver broke,

When down her weedy trophies and herself

Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,

And mermaidlike awhile they bore her up,

Which time she chanted snatches of old lauds,

As one incapable of her own distress,

Or like a creature native and endues

Unto that element. But long it could not be

Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,

Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay

To muddy death.

Coriolanus, Act 4, Scene 7, Lines 1-12

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 22:32:00 -0700

Aufidius: Do they still fly to th’ Roman?

Lieutenant: I do not know what witchcraft’s in him, but

Your soldiers use him as the grace ‘fore meat,

They talk at table, and their thanks at end;

And you are darkened in this action, sir,

Even by your own.

Aufidius: I cannot help it now,

Unless by using means I lame the foot

Of our design. He bears himself more proudlier,

Even than my person, than I thought he would

When first I did embrace him. Yet his nature

In that’s no changeling, and I must excuse

What cannot be amended.

Thou art a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-liver'd, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way! Hence horrible villain or I'll spurn thine eyes like balls before me; I'll unhair thy head! Thou shalt be whipp'd with wire, and stew'd in brine, smarting in lingering pickle!

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 22:07:00 -0700

You are not worth another word, else I’d call you knave.

Sonnet 140

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 21:56:59 -0700

Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press

My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain,

Lest sorrow lend me words, and words express

The manner of my pity-wanting pain.

If I might teach thee wit, better it were,

Though not to love, yet, love, to tell me so,

As testy sick men, when their deaths be near,

No news but health from their physicians know.

For if I should despair, I should grow mad,

And in my madness might speak ill of thee.

Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad,

Mad slanderers by mad ears believèd be.

That I may not be so, nor thou belied,

Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide.

Twelfth Night; or, What You Will, Act 1, Scene 1, Lines 1-3

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 14:52:54 -0600

Orsino: If music be the food of love, play on;

Give me excess of it, that surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken and so die.

Sonnet 123

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 14:59:15 -0600

No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change.

Thy pyramids built up with newer might

To me are nothing novel, nothing strange;

They are but dressings of a former sight,

Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire

What thou dost foist upon us that is old,

And rather make them born to our desire

Than think that we before have heard them told.

Thy registers and thee I both defy,

Not wond’ring at the present nor the past,

For thy records and what we see doth lie,

Made more or less by thy continual haste.

This I do vow and this shall ever be:

I will be true, despite thy scythe and thee.

Twelfth Night; or, What You Will, Act 2, Scene 4, Lines 51-66

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 12:01:00 -0600

Feste [sings]:

Come away, come away, death,

And in sad cypress let me be laid.

Fly away, fly away, breath;

I am slain by a fair cruel maid.

My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,

Oh prepare it!

My part of death, no one so true

Did share it.

Not a flower, not a flower sweet

On my black coffin let there be strown;

Not a friend, not a friend greet

My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown.

A thousand thousand sighs to save,

Lay me, oh, where

Sad true lover never find my grave,

To weep there!

Sonnet 96

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 02:58:00 -0600

Some say thy fault is in youth, some wantonness;

Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport;

Both grace and faults are loved of more and less;

Thou mask’st faults graces that to thee resort.

As on the finger of a thronèd queen

The basest jewel will be well esteemed,

So are those errors that in thee are seen

To truths translated and for true things deemed.

How many lambs might the stern wolf betray,

If like a lamb he could his looks translate!

How many gazes mightest thou lead away,

If thous wouldst use the strength of all thy state!

But do not so; I love thee in such sort

As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report.

Coriolanus, Act 3, Scene 3, Lines 126-145

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 02:37:00 -0600

Brutus: There’s no more to be said, but he is banished

As enemy to the people and his country.

It shall be so.

All Plebians: It shall be so, it shall be so!

Coriolanus: You common cry of curs, whose breath I hate

As reek o’th’ rotten fens, whose loves I prize

As the dead carcasses of unburied men

That do corrupt my air, I banish you!

And here remain with your uncertainty!

Let every feeble rumor shake your hearts!

Your enemies, with nodding of their plumes,

Fan you into despaire! Have the power still

To banish your defenders, till at length

Your ignorance — which finds not till it feels,

Making but reservation of yourselves,

Still your own foes — deliver you

As most abated captives to some nation

That won you without blows! Despising

For you the city, thus I turn my back.

There is a world elsewhere.

Richard III, Act 4, Scene 4, Lines 184-196

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 15:00:40 -0600

Duchess of York: Either thou wilt die, by God’s just ordinance,

Ere from this war thou turn a conqueror,

Or I with grief and extreme age shall perish

And never look upon thy face again.

Therefore take with thee my most heavy curse;

Which, in the day of battle, tire thee more

Than all the complete armour that thou wear’st!

My prayers on the adverse party fight;

And there the little souls of Edward’s children

Whisper the spirits of thine enemies

And promise them success and victory.

Bloody thou art, bloody will be thy end;

Shame serves thy life and doth thy death attend.

Sonnet 1

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 14:56:44 -0600

From fairest creatures we desire increase,

That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,

But as the riper should by time decease,

His tender heir might bear his memory:

But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,

Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,

Making a famine where abundance lies,

Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:

Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament,

And only herald to the gaudy spring,

Within thine own bud buriest thy content,

And, tender churl, mak’st waste in niggarding:

Pity the world, or else this glutton be,

To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

Much Ado About Nothing, Act 4, Scene 1, Lines 100-108

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 01:44:00 -0600

Claudio: O Hero, what a Hero hadst thou been

If half thy outward graces had been placed

About thy thoughts and counsels of thy heart!

But fare thee well, most foul, most fair! Farewell,

Thou pure impiety and impious purity!

For thee I’ll lock up all the gates of love,

And on my eyelids shall conjecture hang,

To turn all beauty into thoughts of harm,

And never shall it more be gracious.

Sonnet 2

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 01:25:45 -0600

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,

And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,

Thy youth’s proud livery so gazed on now,

Will be a totter’d weed of small worth held:

Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,

Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;

To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes,

Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.

How much more praise deserv’d thy beauty’s use,

If thou couldst answer ‘This fair child of mine

Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,’

Proving his beauty by succession thine!

This were to be new made when thou art old,

And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.

Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 3, Lines 4-10

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 01:20:00 -0600

First Witch: A sailor’s wife had chestnuts in her lap,

And munched, and munched, and munched. “Give me,” quoth I.

“Aroint thee, witch!” the rump-fed runnion cries.

Her husband’s to Aleppo gone, master o’th’ Tiger;

But in a sieve I’ll thither sail,

And like a rat without a tail

I’ll do, I’ll do, and I’ll do.

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1, Lines 57-91

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 01:10:00 -0600

Hamlet: To be, or not to be: that is the question:

Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to, ‘tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause: there’s the respect

That makes calamity of so long life;

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,

The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,

The insolence of office and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscover’d country from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!

The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons

Be all my sins remember’d.

Othello, Act 5, Scene 2, Lines 311-312

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 01:00:00 -0600

Iago: Demand me nothing: what you know, you know:

From this time forth I never will speak word.

Sonnet 18

Thu, 07 Jun 2012 19:32:06 -0600

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.

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

And every fair from fair sometimes declines,

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed.

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;

Nor shall Death brag thou wand’r’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st.

So long as men can breath or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Much Ado About Nothing, Act 4, Scene 1, Lines 267-268

Thu, 07 Jun 2012 19:20:00 -0600

Benedick: I do love nothing in the world so well as you.

Is that not strange?