I am Fortune's fool.

O! I am Fortune's fool.

You take my life when you take the means whereby I live.

The course of true love never did run smooth.

Cowards die many times before their deaths

The valiant never taste of death but once.

There is no evil angel but Love.

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.

Action is eloquence.

Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides:

Who cover faults, at last shame them derides.

Why then, can one desire too much of a good thing?

Come, civil night,

Thou sober-suited matron, all in black.

Now it is the time of night

That the graves, all gaping wide,

Every one lets forth his sprite

In the church-way paths to glide.

Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.

O God! that one might read the book of fate.

Like madness is the glory of this life

As this pomp shows to a little oil and root.

What is the city but the people?

A peace above all earthly dignities,

A still and quiet conscience.

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

Infirmity doth still neglect all office

Whereto our health is bound; we are not ourselves

When nature, being oppressed, commands the mind

To suffer with the body.

Oftentimes excusing of a fault

Doth make the fault the worse by the excuse.

'Tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers.

Live in thy shame, but die not shame with thee!

This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune (often the surfeits of our own behaviour) we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars: as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treacherous by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star!

O father, what a hell of witchcraft lies

In the small orb of one particular tear.

One may smile, and smile, and be a villain!

Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill.

Murder’s out of tune,

And sweet revenge grows harsh.

War is no strife

To the dark house and the detested wife.

Sable Night, mother of Dread and Fear,

Upon the world dim darkness doth display,

And in her vaulty prison stows the Day.

Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.

Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving.

Nought's had, all's spent,

Where our desire is got without content.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be; for loan oft loses both itself and friend.

Time's glory is to calm contending kings,

To unmask falsehood and bring truth to light,

To stamp the seal of time in aged things,

To wake the morn and sentinel the night,

To wrong the wronger till he render right,

To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours,

And smear with dust their glittering golden towers;

To fill with worm-holes stately monuments,

To feed oblivion with decay of things,

To blot old books and alter their contents,

To pluck the quills from ancient ravens' wings,

To dry the old oak's sap and cherish springs,

To spoil antiquities of hammer'd steel,

And turn the giddy round of Fortune's wheel;

To show the beldam daughters of her daughter,

To make the child a man, the man a child,

To slay the tiger that doth live by slaughter,

To tame the unicorn and lion wild,

To mock the subtle in themselves beguiled,

To cheer the ploughman with increaseful crops,

And waste huge stones with little water drops.

They do not love that do not show their love.

My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,

And every tongue brings in a several tale,

And every tale condemns me for a villain.

Time ... thou ceaseless lackey to eternity.

Conscience doth make cowards of us all.

Gold? Yellow, glittering, precious gold?...

This yellow slave

Will knit and break religions, bless th’ accursed,

Make the hoar leprosy adored, place thieves,

And give them title, knee and approbation

With senators on the bench.

For men have marble, women waxen, minds,

And therefore are they form'd as marble will;

The weak oppress'd, the impression of strange kinds

Is form'd in them by force, by fraud, or skill:

Then call them not the authors of their ill,

No more than wax shall be accounted evil

Wherein is stamp'd the semblance of a devil.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

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.

Let every man be master of his time.

We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

Good things of day begin to droop and drowse;

While night's black agents to their preys do rouse.

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing

But, O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes!

For marriage is a matter of more worth

Than to be dealt with in attorneyship.

For what is wedlock forced but a hell,

An age of discord and continued strife?

Whereas the contrary bringeth forth bliss,

And is a pattern of celestial peace.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

Oh, no, it is an ever-fixèd mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark

Whose worth's unknown, although its height be taken.

The world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.

There's small choice in rotten apples.

Oh, it is excellent to have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.

Seest thou not what a deformed thief this fashion is?

Patience is sottish, and impatience does become a dog that's mad.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death.

Patience is pale cold cowardice in noble breasts.

Though patience be a tired mare, yet she will plod.

The fashion wears out more apparel than the man.