Today I’m continuing with the Blogging from A-Z Challenge! I’ll be posting every day except Sundays throughout April. This year, my readers voted for the theme “My Favourite Book Quotes”. So I’ve collected together the quotations that move me, inspire me and make me smile. I hope you enjoy them!
For letter W, I’m focusing on William Shakespeare, who is probably the most quoted author of all time. It was quite a struggle to narrow down my favourite quotes to the selection here! While I’ve watched a lot of Shakespeare’s plays and film adaptions, the plays below are those I’ve read cover-to-cover and therefore know best.
My Favourite Quotes from William Shakespeare
“These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triump die, like fire and powder
Which, as they kiss, consume”“Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight! For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.”
“But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.”
“Peace? I hate the word as I hate hell and all Montagues.”
“Oh, I am fortune’s fool!”
“My only love sprung from my only hate.”
“A plague on both your houses.”
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
“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.”“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…”“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
“Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.”
“When sorrows come, they come not single spies. But in battalions!”
“God hath given you one face, and you make yourself another.”
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
“What piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, 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?”
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
“By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.”“Where shall we three meet again in thunder, lightning, or in rain? When the hurlyburly ‘s done, when the battle ‘s lost and won”
“Fair is foul, and foul is fair, hover through fog and filthy air.”
“O, full of scorpions is my mind!”
“I go and it is done. The bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven or to hell.”
“I have no words. My voice is in my sword.”
William Shakespeare, Macbeth
“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”
“We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”
“O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in’t!”“Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Ding-dong
Hark! now I hear them,—Ding-dong, bell.”“Your tale, sir, would cure deafness.”
“You taught me language, and my profit on’t / Is, I know how to curse”
“A pox o’ your throat, you bawling, blasphemous, incharitable dog!”
William Shakespeare, The Tempest
“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”“Though she be but little, she is fierce!”
“The course of true love never did run smooth.”
“Lord, what fools these mortals be!”
“Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet’s eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.”“If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear.”“O me, you juggler, you canker-blossom, you thief of love!”
“I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was.”
William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Do you enjoy Shakespeare? Do you have any favourite quotes from an author beginning with W? Let me know in the comments!
I haven’t read Shakespeare in many years but it was amazing to me that I remembered so many of the quotes! I’m visiting from April A to Z.
They’re very memorable even years later. Some of these I haven’t read since high school.
I have to admit, I’m not a big “fan” of Shakespeare. I remember reading a few works of his when I was in high school but that was years ago and I don’t remember much of what I read 🙂 Congrats on almost finishing the challenge!! You did a great job with the quotes and how you organized them!!
betty
https://benchsnotebook.blogspot.com/
Thanks, Betty. I didn’t like Shakespeare much when we studied him in high school, either. My appreciation only grew later. Like with all plays, watching a performance is much more enjoyable than reading the script.
I always grin when I read that last line from A Midsummer Night’s Dream — as if Puck could ever really be sorry for what he’s done. LOL.
Ronel visiting for the A-Z Challenge My Languishing TBR: W
I love Puck’s mischievous energy.