Shakespeare’s best quotes

Love and Romance

• "The course of true love never did run smooth."

  • A Midsummer Night's Dream

• "If music be the food of love, play on."

  • Twelfth Night

• "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate."

  • Sonnet 18

• "My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep; the more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite."

  • Romeo and Juliet

Life and Mortality

• "To be, or not to be, that is the question."

  • Hamlet

• "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players."

  • As You Like It

• "Out, out brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more."

  • Macbeth

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

  • Julius Caesar

Wisdom and Virtue

• "Brevity is the soul of wit."

  • Hamlet

• "The better part of Valour, is Discretion."

  • Henry IV, Part 1

• "This above all: to thine own self be true."

  • Hamlet

• "The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool."

  • As You Like It

Conflict and Power

• "Et tu, Brute?"

  • Julius Caesar

• "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

  • Hamlet

• "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."

  • Henry IV, Part 2

• "Now is the winter of our discontent."

  • Richard III

Humor and Wit

• "A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!"

  • Richard III

• "I am one who loved not wisely but too well."

  • Othello

• "Better a witty fool, than a foolish wit."

  • Twelfth Night

• "Parting is such sweet sorrow."

  • Romeo and Juliet