Shakespeare

The time is out of joint. O cursèd spite
That ever I was born to set it right!

- Hamlet, in Hamlet, act 1, scene 4

This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire - why, it appeareth no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.

Hamlet, in Hamlet, act 2, scene 2

I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

Hamlet, in Hamlet, act 2, scene 2

This is the excellent foppery of the world: that when we are sick in fortune -- often the surfeits of our own behaviour -- we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars, as if we were villains on necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence. ... An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star!

Edmond, in King Lear, act 1, scene 2

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god -- the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

Hamlet, in Hamlet, act 2, scene 2

What should such fellows as I do, crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves all; believe none of us.

Hamlet, in Hamlet, act 3, scene 1

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't, ah fie, 'tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed. Things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. [[entirely]]

Hamlet

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 pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.

Hamlet, in Hamlet, act 3, scene 1

Conscience is but a word that cowards use,
Devised at first to keep the strong in awe.

King Richard, in Richard III, act 5, scene 3

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.

- Antonio, in The Merchant of Venice, act 1, scene 3

Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come. Make her laugh at that.

Hamlet contemplating Yorick's skull, in Hamlet, act 5, scene 1

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
that struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Macbeth, in Macbeth, act 5, scene 5

More...

The dullness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits.

- Celia, in As You Like It, act 1, scene 2

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

Hamlet, in Hamlet, act 2, scene 2

Sure He that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and godlike reason
To fust in us unused.

Hamlet, in Hamlet, act 4, scene 4

Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.

Julius Caesar, in Julius Caesar, act 2, scene 2

Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?

Sir Toby Belch, in Twelfth Night, act 2, scene 3

The whirligig of time brings in his revenges.

Feste, in Twelfth Night, act 5, scene 1

For we which now behold these present days
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

Sonnet 106

Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go.

Claudius, in Hamlet, act 3, scene 1

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin?

Hamlet, in Hamlet, act 3, scene 1

God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another.

Hamlet, in Hamlet, act 3, scene 1

He jests at scars that never felt a wound.

Romeo, in Romeo and Juliet, act 2, scene 1

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!

Hamlet, in Hamlet, act 1, scene 2

I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.

Hamlet, in Hamlet, act 2, scene 2

I had most need of blessing, and “Amen”
Stuck in my throat.

Macbeth, in Macbeth, act 2, scene 2

If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh?
If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?

Shylock, in The Merchant of Venice, act 3, scene 1

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.

Hamlet, in Hamlet, act 3, scene 1

Let Hercules himself do what he may,
The cat will mew, and dog will have his day.

Hamlet, in Hamlet, act 5, scene 1

Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale,
Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.

Louis the Dauphin, in King John, act 3, scene 4

Man, proud man,
Drest in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he’s most assur'd,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven,
As make the angels weep.

Isabella, in Measure for Measure, act 2, scene 2

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

Claudius, in Hamlet, act 3, scene 3

O mischief, thou art swift
To enter in the thoughts of desperate men!

Romeo, in Romeo and Juliet, act 5, scene 1

O that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter!

Hamlet, in Hamlet, act 1, scene 2

O, it is excellent
To have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.

Isabella, in Measure for Measure, act 2, scene 2

Our indiscretion sometime serves us well
When our deep plots do pall; and that should learn us
There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.

Hamlet, in Hamlet, act 5, scene 2

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.

Malvolio, in Twelfth Night, act 2, scene 5

Striving to better, oft we mar what's well.

Albany, in King Lear, act 1, scene 4

That which in mean men we entitle patience
Is pale cold cowardice in noble breasts.

Duchess of Gloucester, in Richard II, act 1, scene 2

The dread of something after death -
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveler returns - puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of.

Hamlet, in Hamlet, act 3, scene 1

The Prince of Darkness is a gentleman.

Edgar, in King Lear, act 3, scene 4

Thou wouldst as soon go kindle fire with snow
As seek to quench the fire of love with words.

Julia, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, act 2, scene 7

Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.

Polonius, in Hamlet, act 2, scene 2

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.

Hamlet, in Hamlet, act 3, scene 1

Use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity: the less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.

Hamlet, in Hamlet, act 2, scene 2

We defy augury. There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all.

Hamlet, in Hamlet, act 5, scene 2

We were not born to sue, but to command.

King Richard, in Richard II, act 1, scene 1

With devotion's visage
And pious action we do sugar o'er
The Devil himself.

Polonius, in Hamlet, act 3, scene 1

You take my life
When you do take the means whereby I live.

Shylock, in The Merchant of Venice, act 4, scene 1

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

Duke Senior, in As You Like It, act 2, scene 1

Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny.

Hamlet, in Hamlet, act 3, scene 1

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the fraught bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?

Macbeth, in Macbeth, act 5, scene 3

Ceremony was but devised at first
To set a gloss on faint deeds [and] hollow welcomes....

Timon, in Timon of Athens, act 1, scene 2