Quotes from The Rape of Lucrece

William Shakespeare ·  50 pages

Rating: (1.3K votes)


“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?
Or what fond beggar, but to touch the crown,
Would with the sceptre straight be strucken down?”
― William Shakespeare, quote from The Rape of Lucrece


“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?”
― William Shakespeare, quote from The Rape of Lucrece


“Those that much covet are with gain so fond,
For what they have not, that which they possess
They scatter and unloose it from their bond,
And so, by hoping more, they have but less;
Or, gaining more, the profit of excess
Is but to surfeit, and such griefs sustain,
That they prove bankrupt in this poor-rich gain.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from The Rape of Lucrece


“But no perfection is so absolute
That some inpurity doth not pollute.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from The Rape of Lucrece


“Beauty itself doth of itself persuade
The eyes of men without orator.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from The Rape of Lucrece



“This forced league doth force a further strife.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from The Rape of Lucrece


“Why should the private pleasure of some one
Become the public plague of many moe?
Let sin, alone committed, light alone
Upon his head that hath transgressed so;
Let guiltless souls be freed from guilty woe:
For one's offence why should so many fall,
To plague a private sin in general?”
― William Shakespeare, quote from The Rape of Lucrece


“The deep vexation of is inward soul
Hath served a dumb arrest upon his tongue;
Who, mad that sorrow should his use control,
Or keep him from heart-easing words so long,
Begins to talk; but through his lips do throng
Weak words, so thick come in his poor heart's aid,
That no man could distinguish what he said.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from The Rape of Lucrece


About the author

William Shakespeare
Born place: Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, The United Kingdom
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“I was born the same year as ten brothers and a dozen sisters. Being born doesn’t make a single soul important. But you were important when I met you, that girl who dressed as a boy, who taught herself to shoot true, who dreamed and saved and wanted so badly. That girl was someone who had made herself matter. She was someone I liked. What the hell has happened since you came here that she is so worthless to you? What’s happened that only my brother’s approval and some power you never needed before can make you important? That’s why I didn’t want to bring you into this revolution, Amani. Because I didn’t want to watch the Blue-Eyed Bandit get unmade by a prince without a kingdom.”
― Alwyn Hamilton, quote from Rebel of the Sands


“Our purpose in life isn’t to arrive at a destination where we find inspiration, just as the purpose of dancing isn’t to end up at a particular spot on the floor. The purpose of dancing – and of life – is to enjoy every moment and every step, regardless of where we are when the music ends.”
― Wayne W. Dyer, quote from Inspiration: Your Ultimate Calling


“Goradel frowned at that. “I don’t feel very expendable.”
― Brandon Sanderson, quote from Mistborn Trilogy


“Trying is not failure…failing to try is.” I”
― Misty Griffin, quote from Tears of the Silenced: A True Crime and an American Tragedy; Severe Child Abuse and Leaving the Amish


“connection between skin color and sunlight. The results were as clear as the sky on a cloudless day—there was a near-constant correlation between skin color and sunlight exposure in populations that had remained in the same area for 500 years or more. They even produced an equation to express the relationship between a given population’s skin color and its annual exposure to ultraviolet rays. (If you’re feeling adventurous, the equation is W = 70-AUV/10. W represents relative whiteness and AUV represents annual ultraviolet exposure. The 70 is based on research that indicates that the whitest possible skin—the result of a population that received zero exposure to UV—would reflect about 70 percent of the light directed at it.)”
― Sharon Moalem, quote from Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease


Interesting books

The Truth of the Matter
(2.2K)
The Truth of the Mat...
by Andrew Klavan
Big Fish
(14.8K)
Big Fish
by Daniel Wallace
Hunt the Moon
(15.8K)
Hunt the Moon
by Karen Chance
Public Secrets
(12.8K)
Public Secrets
by Nora Roberts
True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole
(4.1K)
True Confessions of...
by Sue Townsend
The Devils of Loudun
(1.7K)
The Devils of Loudun
by Aldous Huxley

About BookQuoters

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.