William Shakespeare

“A dream itself is but a shadow (2. 2.).”  [Hamlet, Hamlet]

“A good heart is the sun and the moon; or, rather, the sun and not the moon, for it shines bright and never changes.”

“Action is eloquence.”

“Adieu, adieu, adieu. Remember me (1. 5.).”  [Ghost, Hamlet]

“All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players.

They have their exits and their entrances,

and one man in his time plays many parts.”

“Ay me! for aught that ever I could read, could ever hear by tale or history, the course of true love never did run smooth.... swift as a shadow short as any dream.”  [A Midsummer Night's Dream]

“Ay, sir, to be honest as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand (2. 2.).”  [Hamlet, Hamlet]

“Be just and fear not.”  [Henry VIII]

“Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon 'em.”

“Be to yourself as you would to your friend.”

“Blow, blow, thou winter wind, thou art not so unkind as man’s ingratitude.”

“...brevity is the soul of wit (2. 2.)”  [Polonius, Hamlet]

“But look, the morn in russet mantle clad

Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill (1. 1.).”  [Horatio, Hamlet]

“Doubt thou the stars are fire,

            Doubt that the sun doth move;

Doubt truth to be a liar;

            But never doubt I love (2. 2.).”  [Polonius, reading a letter Hamlet wrote to Ophelia, Hamlet]

“Everyone can master a grief but he that has it.”

“Good-night, good-night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good-night till it be morrow.”  [Romeo and Juliet]

“Great floods have flown from simple sources.”

“Hear the meaning within the word.”

“I could a tale unfold whose lightest word

Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,

Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres,

Thy knotted and combined locks to part,

And each particular hair to stand on end,

Like quills upon the fretful porcupine (1.5.).”  [Ghost, Hamlet]

“If music be the food of love, play on.”

“Let us not burden our remembrances with a heaviness that is gone.”

“Love is not love that alters when it alternation finds.”

“Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.”

“My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.

Words without thoughts never to heaven go (3. 3.).”  [King, Hamlet]

“My soul is in the sky.”  [A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V., Sc. 1]

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be (1. 3.)”  [Polonius, Hamlet]

“No legacy is so rich as honesty.”

“O! it is excellent to have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.”

“O, there has been much throwing about of brains (2. 2.).”  [Guildenstern, Hamlet]

“One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.”

“Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,

A face without a heart (4. 7.)?”  [King, Hamlet]

“Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.”

“Simply the thing I am shall make me live.”

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in ourselves that we are underlings.”

“The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.”  [Henry VI]

“The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.”

“The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.”

“Then of thy beauty do I question make,

That thou among the wastes of time must go.”

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy (1. 5.).”  [Hamlet, Hamlet]

“This above all, to thine own self be true,

And it must follow as the night the day

Thou canst not then be false to any man (1. 3.).”  [Polonius, Hamlet]

“This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi-paradise

...This happy breed of men, this little world,

This precious stone set in a silver sea

...This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England...”

“Thou know'st 'tis common--all that lives must die,

Passing through nature to eternity (1. 2.).”  [Queen, Hamlet]

“Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't” (2. 2.).  [Polonius, Hamlet]

“We are gentlemen that neither in our hearts nor outward eyes envy the great nor shall the low despise.”

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

“--What do you read, my lord?

words, words, words” (2. 2.).  [Polonius; Hamlet, Hamlet]

“What to ourselves in passion we propose,

The passion ending, doth the purpose lose” (3. 2.).  [Player King, Hamlet]

“When he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night...”  [Romeo and Juliet]

“When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions!”

“When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul lends the tongue vows. These blazes, daughter,

Giving more light than heat, extinct in both

Even in their promise, as it is a-making,

You must not take for fire” (1. 3.)  [Polonius, Hamlet]

“Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovered 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 (3. 1.)?”  [Hamlet, Hamlet]