Shakespeare Quotes
Byron Lord 1788-1824
Don Juan
But Shakespeare also says, ‘tis very silly
‘To gild refinèd gold, or paint the lily.'
George III King 1738-1820
(to Fanny Burney)
Was there ever such stuff as great part of Shakespeare? Only one must not say
so! But what think you? - what? - Is there not sad stuff? what? - what?
Hazlitt William 1778-1830
If we wish to know the force of human genius, we should read
Shakespeare. If we wish to see the insignificance of human
learning, we may study his commentators.
Hull Josephine
Playing Shakespeare is very tiring. You never get to sit down, unless you're a king.
Huxley Aldous 1894-1963
‘Fifth Philosopher's Song'
A million million Spermatozoa,
All of them alive:
Out of their cataclysm but one poor Noah
Dare hope to survive.
And among that billion minus one
Might have chanced to be
Shakespeare, another Newton, a new Donne -
But the One was me.
Johnson Samuel 1709-1784
Corneille is to Shakespeare ... as a clipped hedge is to a forest.
Jonson Ben c. 1573-1637
Donne, for not keeping of accent, deserved hanging... Shakespeare
wanted art.
Jonson Ben c. 1573-163
Timber, or Discoveries made upon Men and Matter
The players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare that in his
writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath
been ‘Would he had blotted a thousand.'
Lawrence D.H. 1885-1930
Phoenix
The English ... are paralysed by fear. That is what thwarts and distorts the Anglo-Saxon existence ... Nothing could be more lovely and fearless than Chaucer. But already
Shakespeare is morbid with fear, fear of consequences. That is the strange phenomenon
of the English Renaissance: this mystic terror of the consequences, the consequences of action.
Lawrence D.H. 1885-1930
‘When I Read Shakespeare'
When I read Shakespeare I am struck with wonder
That such trivial people should muse and thunder
In such lovely language.
McEwan Ian 1948-
The Child in Time
Shakespeare would have grasped wave functions, Donne would have understood complementarity and relative time. They would have been excited. What richness!
They would have plundered this new science for their imagery. And they would
have educated their audiences too. But you ‘arts' people, you're not only ignorant
of these magnificent things, you're rather proud of knowing nothing.
Milton John 1608-1674
‘On Shakespeare'
What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones,
The labour of an age in pilèd stones,
Or that his hallowed relics should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid?
Olivier Sir Laurence 1907-1989
Shakespeare - the nearest thing in incarnation to the eye of God.
Pope Alexander 1688-1744
Imitations of Horace
Shakespeare (whom you and ev'ry play-house bill
Style the divine, the matchless, what you will)
For gain, not glory, winged his roving flight,
And grew immortal in his own despite.
Walpole Horace 1717-1797
Letter to Chrisopher Wren
One of the greatest geniuses that ever existed, Shakespeare, undoubtedly wanted taste.
Wilensky Robert
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters
will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare.
Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.
Wordsworth William 1770-1850
‘Scorn not the Sonnet'
Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned,
Mindless of its just honours; with this key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart.