William Shakespeare · 298 pages
Rating: (383.2K votes)
“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!”
“Lord, what fools these mortals be!”
“The course of true love never did run smooth.”
“And yet,to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays.”
“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.”
“My soul is in the sky.”
“The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact.”
“If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
If you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.”
“Are you sure/That we are awake? It seems to me/That yet we sleep, we dream”
“I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.”
“I’ll follow thee and make a heaven of hell,
To die upon the hand I love so well.”
“Lovers and madmen have such seething brains
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
”
“O, when she's angry, she is keen and shrewd! She was a vixen when she went to school; And though she be but little, she is fierce.”
“Love's stories written in love's richest books.
To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes.”
“So we grew together,
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
But yet an union in partition,
Two lovely berries moulded on one stem.”
“Thus I die. Thus, thus, thus.
Now I am dead,
Now I am fled,
My soul is in the sky.
Tongue, lose thy light.
Moon take thy flight.
Now die, die, die, die.”
“I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was.”
“And sleep, that sometime shuts up sorrow's eye, Steal me awhile from mine own company.”
“For you, in my respect, are all the world.
Then how can it be said I am alone
When all the world is here to look on me?”
“Things base and vile, holding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity.
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
Nor hath Love's mind of any judgment taste;
Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste.”
“Oh why rebuke you him that loves you so? / Lay breath so bitter on your bitter foe.”
“If we shadows have offended,
Know but this and all is mended.
That you have but slumbered here,
While these visions did appear,
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding, but a dream.”
“Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania”
“O me, you juggler, you canker-blossom, you thief of love!”
“Ay me! for aught that ever I could read,
could ever hear by tale or history,
the course of true love never did run smooth.”
“Up and down, up and down
I will lead them up and down
I am feared in field in town
Goblin, lead them up and down”
“Therefore another prologue must tell he is not a lion”
“Yet but three come one more.
Two of both kinds make up four.
Ere she comes curst and sad.
Cupid is a knavish lad.
Thus to make poor females mad.”
“She had learned the lesson of renunciation and was as familiar with the wreck of each day's wishes as with the diurnal setting of the sun.”
“The point is that you are an individual inasmuch as you exist in a social matrix of others who respect your individuality and your right to make choices. That's concrete individuality: an individuality that it owes its existence to a kind of communal respect on the part of all the other individualities, and that it had better therefore respect them similarly.”
“But even the longest dedication is too short and too commonplace to honor a friendship so uncommon. When I try to define this asset which has been mine now for years, I tell myself that such a privilege, however rare it may be, is surely not unique; that in the whole adventure of bringing a book successfully to its conclusion, or even in the entire life of some fortunate writers, there must have been sometimes, in the background, perhaps, someone who will not let pass the weak or inaccurate sentence which we ourselves would retain, out of fatigue; someone who would re-read with us for the twentieth time, if need be, a questionable page; someone who takes down for us from the library shelves the heavy tomes in which we may find a helpful suggestion, and who persists in continuing to peruse them long after weariness has made us give up; someone who bolsters our courage and approves, or sometimes disputes, our ideas; who shares with us, and with equal fervor, the joys of art and of living, the endless work which both require, never easy but never dull; someone who is neither our shadow nor our reflection, nor even our complement, but simply himself; someone who leaves us ideally free, but who nevertheless obliges us to be fully what we are. Hospes Comesque.”
“Remember, Lucius, that everything you learn is already a part of you, even to the Godhead Itself. Study nothing except in the knowledge that you already knew it. Worship nothing except in adoration of your true self. And fear nothing"--there the Maestro stopped and shuddered, as though he had a presentiment--"fear nothing except in the certainty that you are your enemy's begetter and its only hope of healing. For everything that does evil is in pain. Will you remember those things?”
“and from that day, even till now, all the storks have been called Peter. The”
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.