Shakespeare Quotes and Sonnets

Sonnet 154

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.

Sonnet 140

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.

Sonnet 123

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.

Sonnet 96

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.

Sonnet 1

Sonnet 2

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.

Sonnet 18

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.

Sonnet 130

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damasked, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound;

I grant I never saw a goddess go;

My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.

     And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

     As any she belied with false compare.

Sonnet 3