Sweet are the uses of adversity which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

If we are marked to die, we are enough to do our country loss; and if to live, the fewer men, the greater share of honor.

Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong.

If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottage princes’ palaces.

The most peaceable way for you, if you do take a thief, is, to let him show himself what he is and steal out of your company.

Men are April when they woo, December when they wed. Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives.

The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils.

Thou know’st the first time that we smell the air we wawl and cry. When we are born we cry, that we are come to this great state of fools.

If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?

And why not death rather than living torment? To die is to be banish’d from myself; And Silvia is myself: banish’d from her Is self from self: a deadly banishment!

And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.

All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.

We cannot conceive of matter being formed of nothing, since things require a seed to start from… Therefore there is not anything which returns to nothing, but all things return dissolved into their elements.

This life, which had been the tomb of his virtue and of his honour, is 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.

You speak an infinite deal of nothing.

Though she be but little, she is fierce!

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.

Words are easy, like the wind; faithful friends are hard to find.

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