Best Shakespeare Quotes from Selected Works with Act and Scene Numbers

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was an English playwright, poet, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's greatest dramatist. His works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. They continue to be studied and reinterpreted.

Below, find the best quotes from King Lear, Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Casear, Othello, Macbeth, and Hamlet with their corresponding act and scene numbers!

King Lear

Nothing will come of nothing.

Act 1 Scene 1

Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave my heart into my mouth. I love your majesty according to my bond, no more, nor less.

Act 1 Scene 1

Now gods, stand up for bastards!

Act 1 Scene 2

Mark it, uncle: have more than thou showest, speak less than thou knowest, lend less than thou owest, ride more than thou goest, learn more than thou trowest, set less than thou throwest, leave thy drink and thy whore, and keep in-a-door, and thou shalt have more, than two tens to a score.

Act 1 Scene 4

Who is it that can tell me who I am?

Act 1 Scene 4

Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise.

Act 1 Scene 5

Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow, you cataracts and hurricanos!

Act 3 Scene 2

I am a man more sinned against than sinning.

Act 3 Scene 2

The Prince of Darkness is a gentleman.

Act 3 Scene 4

And worse I may be yet. The worst is not so long as we can say, "This is the worst."

Act 4 Scene 1

As flies to wanton boys are we to th'gods; They kill us for their sport.

Act 4 Scene 1

So distribution should undo excess, and each man have enough.

Act 4 Scene 1

They told me I was everything. 'Tis a lie; I am not ague-proof.

Act 4 Scene 6

Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality.

Act 4 Scene 6

Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.

Act 4 Scene 6

When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.

Act 4 Scene 6

What, in ill thoughts again? Men must endure their going hence even as their coming hither: ripeness is all. Come on.

Act 5 Scene 2

When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down and ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live, and pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies.

Act 5 Scene 3

No life? Why should a do, a horse, a rat have life, and thou no breath at all?

Act 5 Scene 3

The weight of this sad time we must obey, speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest have borne most; we that are young shall never see so much, nor live so long.

Act 5 Scene 3

Richard III

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York; and all the clouds that lour'd upon our house in the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Act 1 Scene 1

And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover, to entertain these faire well-spoken days, I am determined to prove a villain and hate the idle pleasures of these days.

Act 1 Scene 1

No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity. But I know none, and therefore am no beast.

Act 1 Scene 2

Never came poison from so sweet a place. Never hung poison on a fouler toad. Out of my sight! Thou dost infect my eyes. Thine eyes, sweet lady, have infected mine.

Act 1 Scene 2

Was ever woman in this humour wooed? Was ever woman in this humour won?

Act 1 Scene 2

Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass, that I may see my shadow as I pass.

Act 1 Scene 2

The world is grown so bad that wrens make prey were eagles dare not perch. Since every Jack became a gentleman there's many a gentle person made a jack.

Act 1 Scene 3

Dispute not with her; she is lunatic.

Act 1 Scene 3

Sin, death, and hell have set their marks on him, and all their ministers attend on him.

Act 1 Scene 3

And thus I clothe my naked villainy with old odd ends stolen out of holy writ, and seem a saint when most I play the devil.

Act 1 Scene 3

O sir, it is better to be brief than tedious.

Act 1 Scene 4

I'll not meddle with it; it is a dangerous thing. It makes a man a coward. A man cannot steal, but it accuseth him; he cannot swear, but it checks him; he cannot lie with his neighbor's wife, but it detects him. It is a blushing shamefac'd spirit that mutinies in a man's bosom: it fills one full of obstacles. It made me once restore a purse of gold that I found; it beggars any man that keeps it. It is turned out of all towns and cities for a dangerous thing, and every man that means to live well endeavors to trust to himself and to live without it.

Act 1 Scene 4

So wise so young, they say, do never live long.

Act 3 Scene 1

Bad is the world, and all will come to naught when such bad dealing must be seen in thought.

Act 3 Scene 6

Thou cams't on earth to make the earth my hell.

Act 4 Scene 4

Bloody thou art, bloody will be thy end. Shame serves thy life and doth thy death attend.

Act 4 Scene 4

Wrong hath but wrong, and blame the due of blame.

Act 5 Scene 1

True hope is swift, and flies with swallows' wings: Kings it makes gods and meaner creatures kings.

Act 5 Scene 2

What do I fear? Myself? There's none else by. Richard loves Richard; that is, I and I. Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am. Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why: Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself? Alack, I love myself. Wherefore? For any good that I myself have done unto myself? O no, alas, I rather hate myself for hateful deeds committed by myself. I am a villain--yet I lie: I am not. Fool, of thyself speak well. Fool, do not flatter. My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, and every tongue brings in a several tale, and every tale condemns me for a villain. Perjury, perjury, in the highest degree, murder, stern murder, in the direst degree. All several sins, all used in each degree, throng to the bar, crying all, 'Guilty! Guilty!' I shall despair. There is no creature loves me, and if I die, no soul will pity me. And wherefore should they, since that I myself find in myself no pity to myself?

Act 5 Scene 3

Let not our babbling dreams affright our souls: conscience is but a word that cowards use, devis'd at first to keep the strong in awe. Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law. March on. Join bravely. Let us to't pell-mell: if not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell!

Act 5 Scene 3

I have set my life upon a cast, and I will stand the hazard of the die.

Act 5 Scene 4

A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!

Act 5 Scene 4

Romeo and Juliet

Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona, where we lay our scene, from ancient grudge break to new mutiny, where civil blood makes civil hands unclear from forth the fatal loins of these two foes, a pair of star-crossed lovers take their life, whose misadventured piteous overthrows doth with their death bury their parents' strife.

The Prologue

I will bite my thumb at them, which is disgrace to them if they bear it. [He bites his thumb.] Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?

Act 1 Scene 1

Oh, teach me how I should forget to think!

Act 1 Scene 1

Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight, for I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.

Act 1 Scene 4

My lips, two blushing pilgrims, did ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss. Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, which mannerly devotion shows in this; for saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, and palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss. Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too? Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer. Oh, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do: they pray; grant thou, lest faith turn to despair. Saints do not move, though grant for prayer's sake. Then move not while my prayer's effect I take. Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purged. Then have my lips the sin that they have took. Sin from my lips? Oh, trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again. You kiss by th' book.

Act 1 Scene 4

Blind is his love, and best befits the dark. If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark.

Act 2 Scene 1

But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the East, and Juliet is the sun.

Act 2 Scene 1

See how she leans her cheek upon her hand--Oh, that I were a glove upon that hand, that I might touch that cheek!

Act 2 Scene 1

O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name; Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I'll no longer be a Capulet.

Act 2 Scene 1

What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet.

Act 2 Scene 1

Oh, swear not by the moon, th'inconstant moon that monthly changes in her circled orb, lest that thy love prove likewise variable.

Act 2 Scene 1

My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep; the more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite.

Act 2 Scene 1

Good night, good night. Parting is such a sweet sorrow that I shall say "good night" till it be morrow.

Act 2 Scene 1

Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.

Act 2 Scene 2

Love's heralds should be thoughts which ten times faster glides than the sun's beams, driving back shadows over louring hills.

Act 2 Scene 4

These violent delights have violent ends and in their triumph die, like fire and powder which, as they kiss, consume.

Act 2 Scene 5

Come, gentle night; come, loving, black-browed night, give me my Romeo; and, when I shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun.

Act 3 Scene 2

O serpent heart, hid with a flow'ring face! Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave? Beautiful tyrant, fiend angelical, dove-feathered raven, wolvish-ravening lamb, despised substance of divinest show, just opposite to what thou justly seem'st a damned saint, an honorable villain.

Act 3 Scene 2

Then I defy you, stars!

Act 5 Scene 1

Thus, with a kiss, I die.

Act 5 Scene 3

Eyes, look your last; Arms, take your last embrace; and lips--Oh you, the doors of breath--seal with a righteous kiss a dateless bargain to engrossing death.

Act 5 Scene 3

A glooming peace this morning with it brings; The sun for sorrow will not show his head. Go hence to have more talk of these sad things--Some shall be pardoned, and some punished--For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

Act 5 Scene 3

Julius Caesar

Beware the Ides of March.

Act 1 Scene 2

And since you know you cannot see yourself so well as by reflection, I, your glass, will modestly discover to yourself that of yourself which you yet know not of.

Act 1 Scene 2

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world like a colossus, and we petty men walk under his huge legs and peep about to find ourselves dishonorable graves.

Act 1 Scene 2

Men at some time are masters of their fates. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Act 1 Scene 2

Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look, he thinks too much: such men are dangerous.

Act 1 Scene 2

But for mine own part, it was Greek to me.

Act 1 Scene 2

Let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods, not hew him as a carcass fit for hounds.

Act 2 Scene 1

Now bid me run and I will strive with things impossible, yea, get the better of them.

Act 2 Scene 1

When beggars die there are no comets seen; the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.

Act 2 Scene 2

Cowards die many times before their deaths, the valiant never taste of death but once.

Act 2 Scene 2

Death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.

Act 2 Scene 2

Et tu, Brute? --Then fall, Caesar!

Act 3 Scene 1

Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.

Act 3 Scene 1

Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more.

Act 3 Scene 2

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.

Act 3 Scene 2

The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones.

Act 3 Scene 2

This was the most unkindest cut of all. For when the noble Caesar saw him stab, ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms, quite vanquished him.

Act 3 Scene 2

Mischief, thou art afoot. Take thou what course thou wilt.

Act 3 Scene 2

There are no tricks in plain and simple faith, but hollow men, like horses hot at hand, make gallant show and promise of their mettle.

Act 4 Scene 2

There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.

act 4 Scene 3

His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him that nature might stand up and say to all the world, "This was a man!"

Act 5 Scene 5

Othello

For I will wear my heart upon my sleeve for daws to peck at. I am not what I am.

Act 1 Scene 1

Even now, now, very now, an old black ram is tupping your white ewe.

Act 1 Scene 1

She wished she had not heard it, yet she wished that heaven had made her such a man.

Act 1 Scene 3

She loved me for the dangers I had past, and I loved her that she did pity them.

Act 1 Scene 3

My noble father, I do perceive here a divided duty. To you I am bound for life and education; My life and education both do learn me how to respect you; you are the lord of duty; I am hitherto your daughter. But here's my husband; and so much duty as my mother showed to you, preferring you before her father, so much I challenge that I may profess due to the Moor my lord.

Act 1 Scene 3

The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief; he robs himself that spends bootless grief.

Act 1 Scene 3

Our bodies are our gardens, to which our wills are gardeners.

Act 1 Scene 3

Put money in thy purse.

Act 1 Scene 3

If after every tempest come such calms; may the winds blow till they have wakened death, and let the laboring bark climb hills of seas, Olympus-high, and duck again as low as hell's from heaven!

Act 2 Scene 1

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

Act 2 Scene 3

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, is the immediate jewel of their souls; who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing; 'twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands. But he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him and makes me poor indeed.

Act 3 Scene 3

O, beware, my lord of jealousy! It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on.

Act 3 Scene 3

Nor from mine own weak merits will I draw the smallest fear or doubt of her revolt, for she had eyes and chose me.

Act 3 Scene 3

O now, forever farewell the tranquil mind! farewell content!

Act 3 Scene 3

'Tis not a year or two shows us a man. They are all but stomachs, and we all but food; they eat us hungerly, and when they are full they belch us.

Act 3 Scene 4

O thou weed, who art so lovely fair and smell'st so sweet that the sense aches at thee, would thou hadst never been born!

Act 4 Scene 2

Then let them use us well; else let them know, the ills we do, their ills instruct us so.

Act 4 Scene 3

Ay, let her rot and perish and be damned tonight, for she shall not live! No, my heart is turned to stone; I strike it, and it hurts my hand.--O, the world hath not a sweeter creature! She might lie by an emperor's side and command him tasks.

Act 4 Scene 1

Yet I'll not shed her blood, nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow, and smooth as monumental alabaster.

Act 5 Scene 2

Had she been true, if heaven would make me such another world of one entire and perfect chrysolite, I'd not have sold her for it.

Act 5 Scene 2

Let heaven and men and devils, let them all, all, all cry shame against me, yet I'll speak!

Act 5 Scene 2

I kissed thee ere I killed thee. No way but this, killing myself, to die upon a kiss.

Act 5 Scene 2

Macbeth

When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain? When the hurly-burly's done, When the battle's lost and won. That will be ere the set of sun. Where the place? Upon the heath. There to meet with Macbeth.

Act 1 Scene 1

Fair is foul, and foul is fair, hover through the fog and filthy air.

Act 1 Scene 1

Stars, hide your fires, let not light see my black and deep desires; the eye wink at the hand; yet let that be which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.

Act 1 Scene 4

Look like th'innocent flower, but be the serpent under't.

Act 1 Scene 5

If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly.

Act 1 Scene 7

False face must hide what the false heart doth know.

Act 1 Scene 7

Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

Act 2 Scene 1

That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold; what hath quenched them hath given me fire.

Act 2 Scene 2

Methought I heard a voice cry "Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep"--the innocent sleep, sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care, the death of each day's life, sore labor's bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, chief nourisher in life's feast--

Act 2 Scene 2

What hands are here? Ha, they pluck out mine eyes! Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas is incarnadine, making the green one red.

Act 2 Scene 2

Who could refrain that had a heart to love, and in that heart courage to make's love known?

Act 2 Scene 3

It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood.

Act 3 Scene 4

Double, double, toil and trouble; fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Act 4 Scene 1

By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.

Act 4 Scene 1

Macbeth shall never vanquished be until great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill shall come against him.

Act 4 Scene 1

Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break.

Act 4 Scene 3

Out, damned spot!

Act 5 Scene 1

What's done cannot be undone.

Act 5 Scene 1

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. Out, out, brief candle. 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.

Act 5 Scene 5

And let the angel whom thou still hast served tell thee, Macduff was from his mother's womb untimely ripped.

Act 5 Scene 7

Lay on, Macduff, and damned be him that first cries, "Hold, enough!'"

Act 5 Scene 7

Hamlet

This bodes some strange eruption to our state.

Act 1 Scene 1

Oh, that this too, too sallied flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew, or that the Everlasting had not fixed his canon 'gainst self-slaughter

Act 1 Scene 2

Frailty, thy name is woman!

Act 1 Scene 2

Neither a borrower nor a lender be, for loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulleth th'edge of husbandry.

Act 1 Scene 3

This above all—to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.

Act 1 Scene 3

But to my mind, though I am native here and to the manner born, it is a custom more honored in the breach than the observance.

Act 1 Scene 4

What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord, or to the dreadful summit of the cliff that beetles o'er his base into the sea, and there assume some other horrible form which might deprive your sovereignty of reason, and draw you into madness?

Act 1 Scene 4

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Act 1 Scene 4

Taint not they mind, nor let thy soul contrive against thy mother aught. Leave her to heaven, and to those thorns that in her bosom lodge to prick and sting her.

Act 1 Scene 5

O most pernicious woman! O villain, villain, smiling, damnèd villain! My tables—meet it is I set it down that one may smile and smile and be a villain. At least, I am sure, it may be so in Denmark.

Act 1 Scene 5

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Act 1 Scene 5

The time is out of join. O cursèd spite, that ever I was born to set it right!

Act 1 Scene 5

What day is day, night, night, and time is time, were nothing but to waste night, day, and time; therefore, brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes. I will be brief.

Act 2 Scene 2

Doubt thou the stars are fire, doubt that the sun doth move, doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love.

Act 2 Scene 2

Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.

Act 2 Scene 2

What piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! And yet to me, what is the quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; nor women neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.

Act 2 Scene 2

I'll have these players play something like the murder of my father before mine uncle. I'll observe his looks; I'll tent him to the quick. If 'a do blench, I know my course.

Act 2 Scene 2

To be or not to be—that is the question.

Act 3 Scene 1

To die, to sleep, to sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub, for that in sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause.

Act 3 Scene 1

Thus conscience does make cowards, and thus 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.

Act 3 Scene 1

Soft you now, the fair Ophelia.—Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered.

Act 3 Scene 1

I have heard of your paintings well enough. God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another.

Act 3 Scene 1

Oh, woe is me, t'have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

Act 3 Scene 1

For anything so o'erdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold, as 'twere the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.

Act 3 Scene 2

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

Act 3 Scene 2

Oh, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven; it hath the primal eldest curse upon't, a brother's murder.

Act 3 Scene 3

This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.

Act 3 Scene 3

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

Act 3 Scene 3

So again, good night. I must be cruel only to be kind. This bad begins, and worse remains behind.

Act 3 Scene 4

Mad as the sea and wind when both contend which is the mightier.

Act 3 Scene 4

The body is with the King, but the King is not with the body.

Act 3 Scene 5

We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service—two dishes, but to one table. that's the end.

Act 3 Scene 6

How all occasions do inform against me and spur my dull revenge!

Act 4 Scene 1

Her death was doubtful, and but that great command o'ersways the order she should in ground unsanctified been lodged till the last trumpet.

Act 5 Scene 1

I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers could not with all their quantity of love make up my sum.—What wilt thou do for her?

Act 5 Scene 1

If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, absent thee from felicity awhile, and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, to tell my story.

Act 5 Scene 2

The rest is silence.

Act 5 Scene 2

Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Act 5 Scene 2

Let four captains bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage, for he was likely, had he been put on, to have proved most royal; and for his passage, the soldiers' music and the rite of war speak loudly for him. Take up the bodies. Such a sight as this becomes the field, but here shows much amiss. Go bid the soldiers shoot.

Act 5 Scene 2

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