William Shakespeare

Hamlet

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't, ah fie! 'Tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed.
-(Act 1, sc 2, lines 137-140)

Frailty, thy name is woman!
-(Act 1, sc 2, line 150)

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.
-(Act 1, sc 3, lines 78-80)

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
-(Act 1, sc 5, line 100)

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
-(Act 1, sc 5, lines 187-188)

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
-(Act 2, sc 2, lines 268-270)

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in
reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and mov-
ing 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?
-(Act 2, sc 2, lines 327-332)

I am but mad north-north-west. When the
wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.
-(Act 2, sc 2, lines 402-403)

Yet I, A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak
Like a John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause
And can say nothing - no, not for a king
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damned defeat was made.
-(Act 2, sc 2, lines 593-598)

To be or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrow of ourrageous 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,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the 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 undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller 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 pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.
-(Act 3, sc 1, lines 64-98)

I must be cruel only to be kind.
-(Act 3, sc 4, line 199)

When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
But in battalions.
-(Act 4, sc 5, lines 83-84)

The cat will mew, and the dog will have his day.
-(Act 5, sc 1, line 311)

There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will-
-(Act 5, sc 2, lines 11-12)

Other plays

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Sonnet 18

Cursed be he that moves my bones.
Shakespeare's Epitaph

O, hell! to choose love by another's eyes.
A Midsummer Night's Dream

We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep.
The Tempest

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his our upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
Macbeth Act 5, scene 5, 24-28

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself a fool.

The course of true love never did run smooth.