“Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we might win, by fearing to attempt.[Measure For Measure]”
“Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth, that are written down old with all the characters of age?”
“And I did laugh sans intermission an hour by his dial. O noble fool, a worthy fool -- motley's the only wear.”
“Give thy thoughts no tongue, nor any unproportioned thought his act. Be thou familiar but by no means vulgar.”
“Macduff: What three things does drink especially provoke? Porter: Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine.”
“Then to Silvia let us sing that Silvia is excelling. She excels each mortal thing upon the dull earth dwelling.”
“Sweet are the uses of adversity which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head.”
“The jury, passing on the prisoner's life, may have in the sworn twelve a thief or two guiltier than him they try.”
“The world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.”
“Manhood is melted into courtesies, valor into compliment, and men are only turned into tongue, and trim ones, too.”
“To me, fair friend, you never can be old. For as you were when first your eye I eyed. Such seems your beauty still.”
“Conceit, more rich in matter than in words, brags of his substance: they are but beggars who can count their worth.”
“My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep. The more I give thee, the more I have, For both are infinite”
“Be not afraid of greatness; some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.”
“I had rather be a toad, and live upon the vapor of a dungeon than keep a corner in the thing I love for others uses.”
“I am bewitched with the rogue's company. If the rascal have not given me medicines to make me love him, I'll be hanged.”
“I have touched the highest point of all my greatness, and from that full meridian of my glory I haste now to my setting.”
“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.”
“Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, but not expressed in fancy; rich not gaudy; for the apparel oft proclaims the man.”
“Had I but served my God with half the zeal I served my King, He would not in mine age have left me naked to mine enemies.”
“Your lordship, though not clean past your youth, have yet some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltiness of time.”
“Lord Bacon told Sir Edward Coke when he was boasting, The less you speak of your greatness, the more shall I think of it.”
“You are thought here to be the most senseless and fit man for the constable of the watch, therefore bear you the lantern.”
“I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”
“Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong.”
“Glory is like a circle in the water, which never ceaseth to enlarge itself, till, by broad spreading, it disperse to naught.”
“He took the bride about the neck and kissed her lips with such a clamorous smack that at the parting all the church did echo.”
“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.”
“The teeming Autumn big with rich increase, bearing the wanton burden of the prime like widowed wombs after their lords decease.”
“Come, let's have one other gaudy night. Call to me. All my sad captains. Fill our bowls once more. Let's mock the midnight bell.”