Quotes from Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare

“at Cambridge, a graduate in grammar in the late Middle Ages was required to demonstrate his pedagogical fitness by flogging a dull or recalcitrant boy.”
― Stephen Greenblatt, quote from Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare

“Falstaff something roughly similar—a gentleman sinking into mire—but darker and deeper: a debauched genius; a fathomlessly cynical, almost irresistible confidence man; a diseased, cowardly, seductive, lovable monster; a father who cannot be trusted.”
― Stephen Greenblatt, quote from Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare

“A sentence is but a cheverel glove to a good wit,” quips the clown Feste in Twelfth Night,”
― Stephen Greenblatt, quote from Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare

“Everyone understood that Latin learning was inseparable from whipping. One educational theorist of the time speculated that the buttocks were created in order to facilitate the learning of Latin.”
― Stephen Greenblatt, quote from Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare

“Jaques’ vision in the same comedy of “the whining schoolboy with his satchel / And shining morning face, creeping like snail / Unwillingly to school”
― Stephen Greenblatt, quote from Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare

“Can honour set-to a leg?” Falstaff asks, at the brink of battle.”
― Stephen Greenblatt, quote from Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare

“No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound?”
― Stephen Greenblatt, quote from Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare

“What is honour? A word. What is in that word “honour”?”
― Stephen Greenblatt, quote from Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare

“What is that “honour”? Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it?”
― Stephen Greenblatt, quote from Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare

“He that died o’Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. ’Tis insensible then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I’ll none of it.”
― Stephen Greenblatt, quote from Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare

“I like not such grinning honour as Sir Walter hath. Give me life” (5.3.57–58).”
― Stephen Greenblatt, quote from Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare

“Venus and Adonis is a spectacular display of Shakespeare’s signature characteristic, his astonishing capacity to be everywhere and nowhere, to assume all positions and to slip free of all constraints. The capacity depends upon a simultaneous, deeply paradoxical achievement of proximity and distance, intimacy and detachment.”
― Stephen Greenblatt, quote from Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare

“book by the Spanish friar Luis de Granada, Of Prayer and Meditation. Printed in Paris in 1582, the book opened with a letter by the translator, Richard Harris, lamenting the rise of Schism, Heresy, Infidelity, and Atheism in England. These evils were dark signs that the world was nearing its end, Harris argued, and that Satan was frantically struggling to make a last demonic triumph.”
― Stephen Greenblatt, quote from Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare

“I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses,”
― Stephen Greenblatt, quote from Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare

“affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is?”
― Stephen Greenblatt, quote from Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare

“If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh?”
― Stephen Greenblatt, quote from Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare

“If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?”
― Stephen Greenblatt, quote from Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare

“The group shared a combination of extreme marginality and arrogant snobbishness.”
― Stephen Greenblatt, quote from Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare

“Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know. And so far will I trust thee,”
― Stephen Greenblatt, quote from Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare

“No. Honour hath not skill in surgery, then? No.”
― Stephen Greenblatt, quote from Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare

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“You must understand something, George. The world's leaders create catastrophes and resolve them-- all at their own whimsy-- every single day. It is how the world runs. Lacking anything else to believe in, common people need to believe in their leaders' abilities to save them. It's true! Their emotional well-being-- and yes, their fate-- depends on the intelligence and skill of those who manipulate the days' disasters. And it should go without saying that the one who succeeds in taking the reins of leadership-- by whatever means-- is the most intelligent and skillful, and therefore most qualified to lead.”
― Trenton Lee Stewart, quote from The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner's Dilemma

“முதலாவது பாகம் - புது வெள்ளம் முதலாவது அத்தியாயம் ஆடித்திருநாள்”
― Kalki, quote from பொன்னியின் செல்வன் [Ponniyin Selvan]

“He just stared at me, his gaze intense. I couldn’t look away any more than I could move my arm. Energy crackled between us, and I felt a strange pull to him. Moth to flame. Magnet to magnet. Stupid girl to impossible, slightly mean witch boy. Wizard. Whatever.”
― Danielle Paige, quote from Dorothy Must Die

“As for me, all I know is that I know nothing. And when I want to know something, I look it up in books—their memory never fails.”
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“Bramble's lips were tight. Her fists still shook.

"Take it back," she said. She gazed at the floor, but the words whipped. "We don't want the picture. We don't want your charity. Take it back!"

Teddie drew himself up to his full, towering taffy height.

"N-dash it-O!" he said. "It's not charity and I won't take it back! It's a gift! A gift, dash it all! Because I liked your mum! And I like your sisters! And you, Bramble! I love you!"

The words echoed. Everyone's hands clasped over their mouths, and they stared at Lord Teddie, who panted but kept a tight chin up. Bramble's lips were still pursed. They were white.

"Young man," said the King gently. "Your ship leaves soon?"

Azalea guessed that, with the fiasco of everything, the King had annulled any arrangements between Bramble and Lord Teddie. Lord Teddie's entire taffylike form slumped. He turned to go, all bounciness dissolved.

"Do you mean it?"

Lord Teddie turned quickly. Bramble's lips remained tight, but her gaze was up, blazing yellow.

"Gad, yes," said Lord Teddie. "I love you so much, my fingers hurt!"

"Oh!" Bramble slapped he hand over her mouth and doubled over. "Oh-oh-oh-oh!" She shook. It was hard to tell if she was crying, or coughing, or ill. "Oh!"

In a billow of skirts, Bramble leaped. It was a grand jete worthy of the Delchastrian prima ballerina. She landed right on Lord Teddie, who had no choice but to catch her, and threw her arms around his neck. Then, to everyone's shock, she pressed her lips full on his.

"Oh...my," said Clover.

No one seemed more surprised than Lord Teddie who stumbled back under Bramble's assault.”
― Heather Dixon, quote from Entwined

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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.

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