Top 25 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Quotes In ENGLISH!

“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 best William Shakespeare quotes in English!

Table of Contents

Best William Shakespeare Quotes In English!

“To be, or not to be, that is the question.” -William Shakespeare
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” -William Shakespeare
“All that glitters is not gold.” -William Shakespeare
“To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” -William Shakespeare
“The course of true love never did run smooth.” -William Shakespeare
“Brevity is the soul of wit.” -William Shakespeare
“If music be the food of love, play on.” -William Shakespeare
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” -William Shakespeare
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” -William Shakespeare
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” -William Shakespeare
“Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.” -William Shakespeare
“The quality of mercy is not strain’d, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.” -William Shakespeare
“All for love, and nothing for reward.” -William Shakespeare
“This above all: to thine own self be true.” -William Shakespeare
“What’s done cannot be undone.” -William Shakespeare
“The better part of valor is discretion.” -William Shakespeare
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” -William Shakespeare
“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.” -William Shakespeare
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” -William Shakespeare
“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.” -William Shakespeare
“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” -William Shakespeare
“We know what we are, but know not what we may be.” -William Shakespeare
“The game is up.” -William Shakespeare
“The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.” -William Shakespeare
“All the infections that the sun sucks up from bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him by inchmeal a disease!” -William Shakespeare

Best William Shakespeare Quotes About Life

“Let life be short: else shame will be too long.” -William Shakespeare
“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
“Get thee to a nunnery.” -William Shakespeare
“As merry as the day is long.” -William Shakespeare
“By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap to pluck bright honor from the pale-faced moon, or dive into the bottom of the deep, where fathom-line could never touch the ground, and pluck up drowned honor by the locks.” -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
“We are such stuff as dreams are made on and our little life is rounded with a sleep.” -William Shakespeare
“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.” -William Shakespeare
“Let me be that I am and seek not to alter me.” -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
“Now is the winter of our discontent.” -William Shakespeare
“Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?” -William Shakespeare

Best William Shakespeare Quotes About Friendship

He with thee doth bear a part. / These are certain signs to know / Faithful friend from flattering foe.” -William Shakespeare
“My friends were poor but honest.” -William Shakespeare
“The band that seems to tie their friendship together will be the very strangler of their amity.” -William Shakespeare
“Good company, good wine, good welcome, can make good people.” -William Shakespeare
“There is flattery in friendship.” -William Shakespeare
“Most friendship is faining, most loving mere folly: / Then, heigh-ho, the holly.” -William Shakespeare
This life is most jolly.” -William Shakespeare
“If thou wilt lend this money, lend it not / As to thy friends; for when did friendship take / A breed for barren metal of his friend?” -William Shakespeare
“Thy friendship makes us fresh.” -William Shakespeare
“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
“The presence of a king engenders love / Amongst his subjects and his loyal friends, / As it disanimates his enemies.” -William Shakespeare
“But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, all losses are restored and sorrows end.” -William Shakespeare
“Nature teaches beasts to know their friends.” -William Shakespeare
“That which I would discover / The law of friendship bids me to conceal.” -William Shakespeare
“I thank thee, gentle Percy; and be sure / I count myself in nothing else so happy / As in a soul rememb’ring my good friends; / And as my fortune ripens with thy love, / It shall be still thy true love’s recompense.” -William Shakespeare
“Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, / Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel.” -William Shakespeare
“Keep thy friend, under thy own life’s key.” -William Shakespeare
“He that is thy friend indeed, / He will help thee in thy need: / If thou sorrow, he will weep; / If thou wake, he cannot sleep: / Thus of every grief in heart.” -William Shakespeare
“I desire you in friendship, and I will one way or other make you amends.” -William Shakespeare
“That I will here dismiss my loving friends, / And to my fortunes and the people’s favour / Commit my cause in balance to be weigh’d.” -William Shakespeare
“I count myself in nothing else so happy / As in a soul remembering my good friends.” -William Shakespeare
“Away, boy, from the troops, and save thyself; / For friends kill friends, and the disorder’s such / As war were hoodwink’d.” -William Shakespeare
“For when no friends are by, men praise themselves.” -William Shakespeare
“Friendship is constant in all other things / Save in the office and affairs of love.” -William Shakespeare
“My good friends, I’ll leave you till night.” -William Shakespeare

Best William Shakespeare Quotes From Romeo And Juliet

“Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight, For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.” -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
“Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate! O any thing, of nothing first create!” -William Shakespeare
O heavy lightness, serious vanity, Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms, Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health, Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is! This love feel I, that feel no love in this.” -William Shakespeare
“Two households, both alike in dignity In fair Verona, where we lay our scene From ancient grudge break to new mutiny Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.” -William Shakespeare
“What, drawn, and talk of peace? I hate the word. As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee.”
“A plague o’ both your houses!” -William Shakespeare
“O, swear not by the moon, th’ inconstant moon, That monthly changes in her circled orb, Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.” -William Shakespeare
“Under love’s heavy burden do I sink.” -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
“I defy you, stars[.]” -William Shakespeare
“From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life.” -William Shakespeare
“I fear too early, for my mind misgives; Some consequence, yet hanging in the stars,
Shall bitterly begin.” -William Shakespeare
“O, here Will I set up my everlasting rest, And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
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
“You are a lover. Borrow Cupid’s wings And soar with them above a common bound.”
“Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books, But love from love, toward school with heavy looks.” -William Shakespeare
“These violent delights have violent ends And in their triumph die, like fire and powder, Which, as they kiss, consume.” -William Shakespeare
“What must be shall be.” -William Shakespeare
“If he be married my grave is like to be my wedding bed.” -William Shakespeare
“O, I am Fortune’s fool!” -William Shakespeare
“Go wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.” -William Shakespeare
“I must be gone and live, or stay and die.” -William Shakespeare
“For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.” -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

Best 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
“Beauty, wit, High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service, Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all To envious and calumniating time.” -William Shakespeare
“The end crowns all, And that old common arbitrator, Time, Will one day end it.” -William Shakespeare
“The time is out of joint.” -William Shakespeare
“At Christmas I no more desire a rose Than wish a snow in May’s new-fangled mirth; But like of each thing that in season grows.” -William Shakespeare
“Nothing ‘gainst Times scythe can make defense.” -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
“There are many events in the womb of time which will be delivered.” -William Shakespeare
“And oftentimes excusing of a fault Doth make the fault the worse by the excuse, As patches set upon a little breach, Discredit more in hiding of the fault Than did the fault before it was so patch’d.” -William Shakespeare
“If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me.” -William Shakespeare
“What else may hap, to time I will commit.” -William Shakespeare
“Thus we play the fool with the time and the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us.” -William Shakespeare
“Shorten my days thou canst with sullen sorrow, And pluck nights from me, but not lend a morrow; Thou canst help time to furrow me with age, But stop no wrinkle in his pilgrimage.” -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
“My glass shall not persuade me I am old, So long as youth and thou are of one date; But when in thee time’s furrows I behold, Then look I death my days should expiate.” -William Shakespeare
“I have seen better faces in my time Than stands on any shoulder that I see Before me at this instant.” -William Shakespeare
“I that please some, try all, both joy and terror Of good and bad, that makes and unfolds error.” -William Shakespeare
“What, keep a week away? Seven days and nights, Eightscore-eight hours, and lovers’ absent hours More tedious than the dial eightscore times! O weary reckoning!” -William Shakespeare
“We are time’s subjects, and time bids be gone.” -William Shakespeare
“Time … thou ceaseless lackey to eternity.” -William Shakespeare
“Time is like a fashionable host That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand, And with his arm outstretch’d, as he would fly, Grasps in the comer.” -William Shakespeare
“There’s a time for all things.” -William Shakespeare
“What is past is prologue.” -William Shakespeare
“A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age.” -William Shakespeare
“Defer no time, delays have dangerous ends.” -William Shakespeare
“Time’s the king of men; he’s both their parent, and he is their grave, and gives them what he will, not what they crave.” -William Shakespeare
“The time is out of joint : O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!” -William Shakespeare
“Old Time the clock-setter.” -William Shakespeare
“Time, that takes survey of all the world, Must have a stop.” -William Shakespeare
“Make use of time, let not advantage slip; Beauty within itself should not be wasted: Fair flowers that are not gather’d in their prime Rot and consume themselves in little time.” -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
“The weight of this sad time we must obey, Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most: we that are young Shall never see so much, nor live so long.” -William Shakespeare
“O time, thou must untangle this, not I. It is too hard a knot for me t’untie.” -William Shakespeare

Best William Shakespeare Quotes About Love

“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
“So we grew together, Like to a double cherry, seeming parted, But yet an union in partition, Two lovely berries moulded on one stem.” -William Shakespeare
“Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken.”
“Thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings.” -William Shakespeare
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate.” -William Shakespeare
“So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee.” -William Shakespeare
“I would not wish Any companion in the world but you: Nor can imagination form a shape Besides yourself to like of.” -William Shakespeare
“I know no ways to mince it in love, but directly to say ‘I love you.’” -William Shakespeare
“Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.” -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
“Love comforteth like sunshine after rain, But lust’s effect is tempest after sun; Love’s gentle spring doth always fresh remain, Lust’s winter comes ere summer half be done. Love surfeits not; lust like a glutton dies; Love is all truth; lust full of forged lies.” -William Shakespeare
“They do not love that do not show their love.” -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
“Now join hands, and with your hands your hearts.” -William Shakespeare
“In the spring time, the only pretty ring time, When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding: Sweet lovers love the spring.” -William Shakespeare
“What’s mine is yours, and what is yours is mine.” -William Shakespeare
“Let’s go hand in hand, not one before another.” -William Shakespeare
“What is love? ‘Tis not hereafter: Present mirth hath present laughter.” -William Shakespeare
“A heaven on earth I have won by wooing thee.” -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
“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
“To be wise, and love, Exceeds man’s might.” -William Shakespeare
“Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?” -William Shakespeare
“For where thou art, there is the world itself, and where though art not, desolation.” -William Shakespeare
“I love you more than words can wield the matter, Dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty.” -William Shakespeare
“Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white, Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose; They were but sweet, but figures of delight Drawn after you…” -William Shakespeare
“Oh, love’s best habit is in seeming trust, And age in love loves not to have years told.” -William Shakespeare
“O! how thy worth with manners may I sing, When thou art all the better part of me?”
“Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.” -William Shakespeare
“No sooner met but they looked, no sooner looked but they loved, no sooner loved, but they sighed, no sooner sighed but they asked one another the reason. No sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy; And in these degrees have they made a pair of stairs to marriage.” -William Shakespeare
“Love comforteth like sunshine after rain.” -William Shakespeare
“And when love speaks, the voice of all the gods makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.” -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

Best William Shakespeare Quotes On Life Lessons

“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.” -William Shakespeare
“No legacy is so rich as honesty.” -William Shakespeare
“The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief.” -William Shakespeare
“Let life be short; else shame will be too long.” -William Shakespeare
“Virtue itself ‘scapes not calumnious strokes.” -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
“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
“When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions.” -William Shakespeare
“Pleasure and action make the hours seem short.” -William Shakespeare
“Reputation is an idle and most false imposition: oft got without merit, and lost without deserving.” -William Shakespeare
“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.” -William Shakespeare
“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, his acts being seven ages.” -William Shakespeare
“In time we hate that which we often fear.” -William Shakespeare
“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
“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” -William Shakespeare
“Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs.” -William Shakespeare
“Love sought is good; but given unsought is better.” -William Shakespeare
“To do a great right, do a little wrong.” -William Shakespeare
“Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.” -William Shakespeare
“Life every man holds dear; but the dear man holds honor far more precious-dear than life.” -William Shakespeare
“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” -William Shakespeare

Best William Shakespeare Quotes From Plays

“I will wear my heart upon my sleeve; For daws to peck at.” -William Shakespeare
“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.” -William Shakespeare
“Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.” -William Shakespeare
“When you depart from me sorrow abides, and happiness takes his leave.” -William Shakespeare
“They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.” -William Shakespeare
“The miserable have no other medicine but only hope.” -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
“The course of true love never did run smooth.” -William Shakespeare
“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.” -William Shakespeare
“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” -William Shakespeare
“The worst is not, So long as we can say, ‘This is the worst.’” -William Shakespeare
“My Oberon! What visions have I seen! Methought I was enamoured of an ass.” -William Shakespeare
“If music be the food of love, play on.” -William Shakespeare
“Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.” -William Shakespeare
“What’s mine is yours, and what is yours is mine.” -William Shakespeare

Best William Shakespeare Quotes About Happiness

“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
“The treasury of everlasting joy!” -William Shakespeare
“Bring me a constant woman to her husband, One that ne’er dream’d a joy beyond his pleasure, And to that woman, when she has done most, Yet will I add an honour-a great patience.” -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
“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
“If this be so, the gods do mean to strike me To death with mortal joy.” -William Shakespeare
“But here’s the joy: my friend and I are one, Sweet flattery!” -William Shakespeare
“It is that fery person for all the world, as just as you will desire; and seven hundred pounds of moneys, and gold, and silver, is her grandsire upon his death’s-bed-Got deliver to a joyful resurrections!” -William Shakespeare
“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” -William Shakespeare
“But O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes.” -William Shakespeare
“I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad and to travel for it too!” -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 God that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains that we should, with joy, pleasance, revel, and applause, transform ourselves into beasts.”
“There is tears for his love, joy for his fortune, honor for his valor, and death for his ambition.” -William Shakespeare
“Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds.” -William Shakespeare
“There’s little of the melancholy element in her, my lord: she is never sad but when she sleeps; and not ever sad then; for I have heard my daughter say, she hath often dreamt of unhappiness, and waked herself with laughing.” -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
“Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief, Burst smilingly.” -William Shakespeare
“As little joy, my lord, as you suppose You should enjoy were you this country’s king, As little joy you may suppose in me That I enjoy, being the Queen thereof.”
“I wish you all the joy you can wish.” -William Shakespeare
“Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.” -William Shakespeare
“This told, I joy; but then no longer glad, I send them back again and straight grow sad.” -William Shakespeare