Top 27 William Shakespeare Quotes About Beauty!

“To be, or not to be? That is the question!”

William Shakespeare was an English poet, playwright, and actor. Shakespeare was born in the 1500’s, but his plays are just as popular today as they were when he was alive! Some of Shakespeare’s most famous plays include:

Romeo And Juliet
Hamlet
The Tempest
Twelfth Night
Macbeth

…And many more.

Shakespeare was one of the best English writers of all time, and it’s easy to see why. His plays feature timeless quotes about life, love, relationships, and more.

Whether you’re interested in deep philosophical quotes about life, funny Shakespeare quotes, or hot and heavy Shakespeare quotes about love and romance, we’ve got you covered!

Without further ado, here are the top 27 William Shakespeare quotes about beauty!

Table of Contents

William Shakespeare Quotes About Beauty

“Virtue is beauty, but the beauteous evil. Are empty trunks o’erflourished by the devil.” -William Shakespeare
“Beauty itself doth of itself persuade the eyes of men without an orator.“ -William Shakespeare
“What, is the jay more precious than the lark Because his feathers are more beautiful?” -William Shakespeare
“If I could write the beauty of your eyes And in fresh numbers number all your graces, The age to come would say ‘this poet lies! Such heaven never touched earthly faces.” -William Shakespeare
“To me, fair friend, you never can be old, For as you were when first your eye I ey’d, Such seems your beauty still.” -William Shakespeare
“The most peerless piece of earth, I think, that e’ er the sun shone bright on.” -William Shakespeare
“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
“She’s beautiful, and therefore to be wooed; She is a woman, therefore to be won.” -William Shakespeare
“For where is any author in the world Teaches such beauty as a woman’s eye?” -William Shakespeare
“Beauty is bought by the judgment of the eye.” -William Shakespeare
“Beauty lives with kindness.” -William Shakespeare
“Let witchcraft join with beauty, lust with both!” -William Shakespeare
“Look on beauty, And you shall see ’tis purchased by the weight, Which therein works a miracle in nature, Making them lightest that wear most of it.” -William Shakespeare
“Could beauty my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?” -William Shakespeare
“Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye.” -William Shakespeare
“Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white. Nature’s own sweet and cunning hand laid on.” -William Shakespeare
“Beauty’s a doubtful good, a glass, a flower, Lost, faded, broken, dead within an hour; And beauty, blemish’d once, for ever’s lost, In spite of physic, painting, pain, and cost.” -William Shakespeare
“Thy end is truth’s and beauty’s doom and date.” -William Shakespeare
“Beauty’s effect with beauty were bereft.” -William Shakespeare
“Is she kind as she is fair? For beauty lives with kindness. Love doth to her eyes repair To help him of his blindness.” -William Shakespeare
“What a 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.” -William Shakespeare
“Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white Nature’s own sweet and cunning hand laid on.” -William Shakespeare
“Beauty within itself should not be wasted.” -William Shakespeare
“One beautiful heart is better than thousand beautiful faces. So choose people having beautiful hearts rather than faces.” -William Shakespeare
“Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good; a shining gloss that fadeth suddenly; a flower that dies when it begins to bud; a doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower, lost, faded, broken, dead within an hour.” -William Shakespeare
“See how she leans her cheek upon her hand. O, that I were a glove upon that hand That I might touch that cheek!” -William Shakespeare
“Some are born great, others achieve greatness.” -William Shakespeare
“Were beauty under twenty locks kept fast, yet love breaks through and picks them all at last.” -William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare Quotes About Life

“O gentlemen, the time of life is short! To spend that shortness basely were too long, If life did ride upon a dial’s point, Still ending at the arrival of an hour.” -William Shakespeare
“Let me be that I am and seek not to alter me.” -William Shakespeare
“It is silliness to live when to live is torment; and then have we a prescription to die when death is our physician.” -William Shakespeare
“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.” -William Shakespeare
“Get thee to a nunnery.” -William Shakespeare
“As merry as the day is long.” -William Shakespeare
“I cannot tell what you and other men Think of this life; but, for my single self, I had as lief not be as live to be In awe of such a thing as I myself.” -William Shakespeare
“There where my fortune lives, there my life dies.” -William Shakespeare
“Thy life’s a miracle.” -William Shakespeare
“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?” -William Shakespeare
“To do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottage princes’ palaces.” -William Shakespeare
“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears: I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.” -William Shakespeare
“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: to die, to sleep.” -William Shakespeare
“Let life be short: else shame will be too long.” -William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare Quotes About Love

“Lovers can do their amorous rites by their own beauties.” -William Shakespeare
“Young men’s love then lies Not truly in their hearts but in their eyes.” -William Shakespeare
“For stony limits cannot hold love out, And what love can do that dares love attempt.” -William Shakespeare
“With love’s light wings did I o’erperch these walls, For stony limits cannot hold love out.” -William Shakespeare
“See how she leans her cheek upon her hand, O that I were a glove upon that hand that I might touch that cheek!” -William Shakespeare
“But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the East, and Juliet is the sun.” -William Shakespeare
“I loved Ophelia: Forty thousand brothers Could not, with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum.” -William Shakespeare
“Love is begun by time, And time qualifies the spark and fire of it.” -William Shakespeare
“This is the very ecstasy of love.” -William Shakespeare
“Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear; when little fears grow great, great love grows there.” -William Shakespeare
“Tell me for which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me?” -William Shakespeare
“But love is blind, and lovers cannot see The pretty follies that themselves commit.” -William Shakespeare
“Lovers ever run before the clock.” -William Shakespeare
“One half of me is yours, the other half yours—Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours, And so all yours.” -William Shakespeare
“Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.” -William Shakespeare
“Those lines that I before have writ do lie, Ev’n those that said I could not love you dearer. Yet then my judgment knew no reason why My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.” -William Shakespeare
“Her passions are made of nothing but the finest part of pure love.” -William Shakespeare
“I humbly do beseech of your pardon, For too much of loving you.” -William Shakespeare
“If thou remember’st not the slightest folly That ever love did make thee run into, Thou hast not loved.” -William Shakespeare
“Let’s go hand in hand, not one before another.” -William Shakespeare
“O, how this spring of love resembleth The uncertain glory of an April day, / Which now shows all the beauty of the sun, And by and by a cloud takes all away!” -William Shakespeare
“O heaven, O earth, bear witness to this sound And crown what I profess with kind event If I speak true! If hollowly, invert What best is boded me to mischief! I Beyond all limit of what else i’ th’ world Do love, prize, honor you.” -William Shakespeare
“I, Beyond all limit of what else i’ th’ world, Do love, prize, honour you.” -William Shakespeare
“He is the half part of a blessed man, Left to be finished by such as she: And she a fair divided excellence, Whose fullness of perfection lies in him.” -William Shakespeare
“A heart to love, and in that heart, Courage, to make’s love known.” -William Shakespeare
“The sight of lovers feedeth those in love.” -William Shakespeare
“She loved me for the dangers I had passed, And I loved her that she did pity them.” -William Shakespeare
“They are in the very wrath of love, and they will go together. Clubs cannot part them.” -William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare Quotes From Plays

“Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath bore me on his back a thousand times, and now how abhorr’d in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it..” -William Shakespeare
“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: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” -William Shakespeare
“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” -William Shakespeare
“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” -William Shakespeare
“Love is blind, and lovers cannot see, The pretty follies that themselves commit.” -William Shakespeare
“All that glisters is not gold.” -William Shakespeare
“When you depart from me sorrow abides, and happiness takes his leave.” -William Shakespeare
“Everyone can master a grief but he that has it” -William Shakespeare
“Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.” -William Shakespeare
“Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall” -William Shakespeare
“The miserable have no other medicine but only hope” -William Shakespeare
“What’s mine is yours, and what is yours is mine.” -William Shakespeare
“Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, That I shall say good night till it be morrow.” -William Shakespeare
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet”
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our English dead!” -William Shakespeare
“Neither a borrower nor a lender be; for loan oft loses both itself and friend.” -William Shakespeare
“The play ‘s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.” -William Shakespeare
“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.” -William Shakespeare
“The course of true love never did run smooth.” -William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare Quotes About Happiness

“I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad and to travel for it too!” -William Shakespeare
“Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds.” -William Shakespeare
“The treasury of everlasting joy!” -William Shakespeare
“A goodly portly man, i’ faith, and a corpulent; of a cheerful look, a pleasing eye, and a most noble carriage; and, as I think, his age some fifty, or, by’r Lady, inclining to threescore; and now I remember me, his name is Falstaff.” -William Shakespeare
“Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.” -William Shakespeare
“But here’s the joy my friend and I are one… Then she loves but me alone.” -William Shakespeare
“My life, my joy, my food, my ail the world!” -William Shakespeare
“How much better is it to weep at joy than to joy at weeping.” -William Shakespeare
“And now what rests but that we spend the time; With stately triumphs, mirthful comic shows, Such as befits the pleasure of the court; Sound drums and trumpets farewell sour annoy; For here, I hope, begins our lasting joy.” -William Shakespeare
“How sweet is love itself possess’d, When but love’s shadows are so rich in joy!” -William Shakespeare
“Lay aside life-harming heaviness, And entertain a cheerful disposition.” -William Shakespeare
“Joy absent, grief is present for that time.” -William Shakespeare
“All days of glory, joy, and happiness.” -William Shakespeare
“Be cheerful; wipe thine eyes.” -William Shakespeare
“There is tears for his love, joy for his fortune, honor for his valor, and death for his ambition.” -William Shakespeare
“What win I, if I gain the thing I seek A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy. Who buys a minute’s mirth to wail a week Or sells eternity to ‘get a toy For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy.” -William Shakespeare
“Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament; Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident.” -William Shakespeare
“Let’s go hand in hand, not one before another.” -William Shakespeare
“Here come the lovers, full of joy and mirth.- Joy, gentle friends! joy and fresh days of love Accompany your hearts!” -William Shakespeare
“But here’s the joy: my friend and I are one, Sweet flattery!” -William Shakespeare
“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.” -William Shakespeare
“Love sought is good, but given unsought, is better.” -William Shakespeare
“O Lord that lends me life, Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness!” -William Shakespeare
“With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.” -William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare Quotes About Friendship

“Keep thy friend, under thy own life’s key.” -William Shakespeare
“But where there is true friendship, there needs none.” -William Shakespeare
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall with our English dead.” -William Shakespeare
“To mingle friendship far is mingling bloods.” -William Shakespeare
“Madam, you wrong the King’s love with these fears; / Your hopes and friends are infinite.” -William Shakespeare
“For when no friends are by, men praise themselves.” -William Shakespeare
“Thy friendship makes us fresh.”
“Warwick, these words have turn’d my hate to love; / And I forgive and quite forget old faults, And joy that thou becom’st King Henry’s friend -William Shakespeare
“By the Lord, our plot is a good plot as ever was laid; our friends true and constant: a good plot, good friends, and full of expectation; an excellent plot, very good friends.” -William Shakespeare
“A noble shalt thou have, and present pay; / And liquor likewise will I give to thee, / And friendship shall combine, and brotherhood.” -William Shakespeare
“Words are easy, like the wind; faithful friends are hard to find.” -William Shakespeare
“If any man challenge this, he / is a friend to Alencon and an enemy to our person; if thou / encounter any such, apprehend him, an thou dost me love.” -William Shakespeare
“To set a gloss on faint deeds, hollow welcomes, / Recanting goodness, sorry ere ’tis shown; / But where there is true friendship, there needs none.” -William Shakespeare
“The great man down, you mark his favourite flies, / The poor advanc’d makes friends of enemies; / And hitherto doth love on fortune tend, / For who not needs shall never lack a friend, / And who in want a hollow friend doth try, Directly seasons him his enemy.”
“Good my friends, consider / You are my guests.” -William Shakespeare
“I rais’d him, and I pawn’d / Mine honour for his truth; who being so heighten’d, / He watered his new plants with dews of flattery, / Seducing so my friends; and to this end / He bow’d his nature, never known before But to be rough, unswayable, and free.” -William Shakespeare
“Thou common friend, that’s without faith or love- / For such is a friend now; treacherous man, / Thou hast beguil’d my hopes; nought but mine eye.” -William Shakespeare
Could have persuaded me.” -William Shakespeare
“To Milan let me hear from thee by letters / Of thy success in love, and what news else / Betideth here in absence of thy friend; / And I likewise will visit thee with mine.” -William Shakespeare
“Madam, you wrong the King’s love with these fears; / Your hopes and friends are infinite.” -William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare Quotes On Life Lessons

“When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.” -William Shakespeare
“False face must hide what the false heart doth know.” -William Shakespeare
“To do a great right, do a little wrong.” -William Shakespeare
“To be, or not to be, that is the question.” -William Shakespeare
“If money go before, all ways do lie open.” -William Shakespeare
“Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage.” -William Shakespeare
“We know what we are, but know not what we may be.” -William Shakespeare
“Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.” -William Shakespeare
“Men are April when they woo, December when they wed; maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives.” -William Shakespeare
“Desire of having is the sin of covetousness.” -William Shakespeare
“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!” -William Shakespeare
“The miserable have no other medicine, but only hope.” -William Shakespeare
“Life every man holds dear; but the dear man holds honor far more precious-dear than life.” -William Shakespeare
“Let life be short; else shame will be too long.” -William Shakespeare
“Virtue itself ‘scapes not calumnious strokes.” -William Shakespeare
“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” -William Shakespeare
“Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale, vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.” -William Shakespeare
“God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another.” -William Shakespeare
“Ignorance is the curse of God, Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.” -William Shakespeare
“The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.” -William Shakespeare
“Love is not love, which alters when it alteration finds.” -William Shakespeare
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” -William Shakespeare
“Thy overflow of good converts to bad.” -William Shakespeare
“Reputation is an idle and most false imposition: oft got without merit, and lost without deserving.” -William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare Quotes About Time

“Make use of time, let not advantage slip.” -William Shakespeare
“I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.” -William Shakespeare
“Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving.” -William Shakespeare
“What is past is prologue.” -William Shakespeare
“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. 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. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.” -William Shakespeare
“Many strokes, though with a little axe, hew down and fell the hardest-timber’d oak.” -William Shakespeare
“Pleasure and action make the hours seem short.” -William Shakespeare
“Nothing ‘gainst Times scythe can make defense.” -William Shakespeare
“Ruin has taught me to ruminate, That Time will come and take my love away. This thought is as a death, which cannot choose But weep to have that which it fears to lose.”
“Short time seems long in sorrow’s sharp sustaining.” -William Shakespeare
“The extreme parts of time extremely forms all causes to the purpose of his speed.” -William Shakespeare
“See the minutes, how they run, How many make the hour full complete; How many hours bring about the day; How many days will finish up the year; How many years a mortal man may live.” -William Shakespeare
“Yet, do thy worst, old Time; despite thy wrong, My love shall in my verse ever live young.” -William Shakespeare
“So many hours must I take my rest; So many hours must I contemplate.” -William Shakespeare
“I am now of all humors that have showed themselves humors since the old days of goodman Adam to the pupil age of this present twelve o’clock at midnight.” -William Shakespeare
“This is no time to lend money, especially upon bare friendship without security.” -William Shakespeare
“Time travels in divers paces with divers persons.” -William Shakespeare
“We see which way the stream of time doth run.” -William Shakespeare
“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,Creeps in this petty pace from day to dayWhat’s past and what’s to come is strew’d with husks And formless ruin of oblivion.” -William Shakespeare
“No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change.” -William Shakespeare
“What e’er you are That in this desert inaccessible, Under the shade of melancholy boughs, Lose and neglect the creeping hours of time.” -William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare Quotes From Romeo And Juliet

“I defy you, stars.” -William Shakespeare
“Give me my Romeo; and, 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 And pay no worship to the garish sun.” -William Shakespeare
“O, here Will I set up my everlasting rest, And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars.” -William Shakespeare
From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last! Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss A dateless bargain to engrossing death!” -William Shakespeare
“Death, that hath sucked the honey of thy breath, Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.” -William Shakespeare
“These violent delights have violent ends, And in their triumph die.” -William Shakespeare

“From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life Whose misadventured piteous overthrows Do with their death bury their parents’ strife.”
“What must be shall be.” -William Shakespeare
“If he be married my grave is like to be my wedding bed.” -William Shakespeare
“For stony limits cannot hold love out, And what love can do that dares love attempt.” -William Shakespeare
“Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.” -William Shakespeare
“Do thou but close our hands with holy words, Then love-devouring death do what he dare; It is enough I may but call her mine.” -William Shakespeare
“A plague o’ both your houses!” -William Shakespeare
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.” -William Shakespeare
“My only love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late! Prodigious birth of love it is to me, That I must love a loathed enemy.” -William Shakespeare
“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.” -William Shakespeare
“Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs; Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes; Being vexed, a sea nourished with loving tears. What is it else? A madness most discreet, A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.” -William Shakespeare
“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.” -William Shakespeare