Famous Quotes by Shakespeare

William Shakespeare is one of the most celebrated playwrights of all times. Lines from his plays and sonnets have impressed people across time irrespective of the language that they speak and the nation that they belong to.

These quotes express the innermost feelings and touch the chords of heart irrespective of age. Here are few famous quotes by Shakespeare:

"Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."-Prospero of 'The Tempest'

"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"- Jacques of 'As you like it'

"Conscience is but a word that cowards use, devised at first to keep the strong in awe". -King Richard in 'King Richard III'

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet".-Juliet of 'Romeo and Juliet'

"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?"-Shylock of 'The Merchant of Venice'

"Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall".-Escalus in 'Measure for Measure'

"Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind; The thief doth fear each bush an officer".-Gloucester in 'King Henry VI'

"Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings".- Cassius of 'Julius Caesar'

"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,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish'd. 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,
Must give us pause-there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th'unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action."-Hamlet of 'Hamlet'

"Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red"-Lady Macbeth of 'Macbeth'
"Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it; he died as one that had been studied in his death to throw away the dearest thing he owed, as 't were a careless trifle"-Malcolm in 'Macbeth'