Ah, the pleasures of delving into the riches of the Bard!
I did a Google search yesterday on his quotes. I came up with some doozies:
And thus I clothe my naked villainy
With old odd ends, stol'n forth
of holy writ; And seem a saint,
when most I play the devil.
For they are yet ear-kissing arguments.
Glory is like a circle in the water,
Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself,
Till by broad spreading it disperses to naught.
- Doubt that the sun doth move, doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love - Hamlet
- When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions- Hamlet
Thou whoreson zed! thou unnecessary letter!
-King Lear
Only a playwright would think 'unnecessary letter' would be an insult....
I do desire we may be better strangers.
As You Like It
Maybe I should repeat that to the blind date who changed her mind about a follow up date that we planned because I didn't give her all the details of the date fast enough?
More of your conversation would infect my brain.
Coriolanus
A good one when debating liberals....
And then here is one I really resonate with since I can't sleep for more than a few hours every single night:
O sleep! O gentle sleep!
Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down
And steep my senses in forgetfulness?
2 Henry IV
So, what are your favorite Shakespearean quotes?
And be quick about it, thou thou unnecessary letter!
5 comments:
The city I live in is famous for a theatre that puts on Shakespear's plays. We get people from all over Canada and the United States coming to watch them.
I read Shakespear every year in school for 8 years.
One I like is:
"This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow as the night the day,
Thou canst not be then be false to any man."
(Polonius in Hamlet)
"I do desire we may be better strangers." That's my favorite...dying to use it on somebody at work!!!
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
My favorite from my favorite sonnnt, #116.
"Thou whoreson zed!"
I was trying to find this quote which I remember from studying King Lear long ago and found your comment in my Google search.
The Bard did not actually invent the notion that 'z' was a worthless letter. Rather he was referencing an argument of his time over the addition of said letter to the English alphabet. We still use 's' to form the /z/ sound (realise, his, ways...) and the argument was (is?) do we really need 'z'? Lear evidently (and anachronistically) thinks not!
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