What's your favorite Shakespearean quote?

Don’t remember which play it’s from: “Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war,,,”.

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

The “St. Crispins Day” speech from Henry V is one of my favorites also.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be.

@Zen_Again : Do you know the “Gilligan’s Island” version of that quote?

Great minds think alike.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be.

For a loan oft loses both itself and friend.

Truth is truth, To the end of reckoning.

Ooh, @hawaii_jake I do!!!!

“When I said I would die a bachelor, I never dreamed that I would live to get married!”

“My only love sprung from my only hate” Romeo and Juliet

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players…”

“Brevity is the soul of wit”

Let us sit upon the ground & tell sad stories of the death of kings.

“Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon.”

“What a 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”

Hamlet

“For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
that then I scorn to change my state with kings.”

-Sonnet 29

“I do smell all horse-piss, at which my nose is in great indignation”.
(Trinculo, in The Tempest, upon coming ashore after the shipwreck)

@stranger_in_a_strange_land, I believe that “cry havoc” is from Edward III. You beat me to the punch on the St. Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V; the whole damn scene. That sure was a good movie, too. It almost (almost) can make one forget how horrible it is what follows at Agincourt (or any battle).

Enter the KING

WESTMORELAND. O that we now had here
But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do no work to-day!

KING. What’s he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin;
If we are mark’d to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call’d the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian.’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.’
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

The Fault, dear Brutas is not in our stars.
I always took it to mean that our destiny isn’t predetermined but that we design our own destiny. So our wrongs are of our own making.

“Alas, poor Yorick!”

Purely because prior to my birth I was referred to as ‘Yorick’. Due to my skull appearing to be disproportionately large on the ultrasound.

Off-topic, but sort of not: I love that this Q gets such response, so quickly, on a Monday morning.

Now get back to work, all of you. Us.

@CyanoticWasp Ah – the engrandizement of war!

referring to your prior post, of course. :-)

@janbb, yes; I agree. Which was why I added the disclaimer. When I was a boy and a young man I used to love “action movies”, “war movies” and other blood and guts stuff. Now I see the flames, explosions, gunfire, swords and arrows and all I can think is, “What a bloody, painful waste.”

But done well, as in Henry V, the speeches and portrayals can still evoke the emotions they’re supposed to.

@marina The one you chose is actually my favorite. But the best part of it is how he compares man to Gods but then says he isn’t pleased with either Male or Female.
I take it to mean we were born with so much potential and then we fall short.

I could quote anything from The Tempest (particularly Caliban’s speech about the noises of the isle and Prospero’s revels speech) because it’s my favorite Shakespeare. But I’ll try to do other plays and funy/lesser-known quotations, too.

Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.
(Trinculo, The Tempest)

O, handle not the theme, to talk of hands
Lest we remember still that we have none.
(Titus, Titus Andronicus)

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
(Gertrude, Hamlet)

Do you bandy looks with me, you rascal? Strikes him.
(Lear, King Lear)

A random serious one, I guess:

Impute it not a crime
To me or my swift passage that I slide
O’er sixteen years and leave the growth untried
Of that wide gap, since it is in my power
To o’erthrow law and in one self-born hour
To plant and o’erwhelm custom.
(Time, The Winter’s Tale)

@absalom – The Tempest is my favourite too (as you could probably guess from my choice of quote). I decided against posting Caliban’s famous speech because it’s rather long.

@downtide, please go ahead and post it, so I won’t feel so conspicuous. (And so that I can know it, of course.)

A lot of good quotes on this thread! Aren’t we a literate bunch~!

One of my favorites is from Hamlet:

“Good-night, sweet prince; And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”

When I received the news that my father-in-law passed, that was the first thing to come to mind.

“Such as we are made of, such we be.”

- Mr. Billy Shakespeare

@Yetanotheruser I used to say that to my dog Prince every night when putting him in the kitchen. Since he was a gormless cocker spaniel, it might not have meant much to him, but it amused me.

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.

~Jaques, As You Like It (Act II, Scene VII, lines 139–1142)

My favorites (at least today) are strangely martial, considering the season. But they are what they are:

The breach in question is the gap in the wall of the city of Hafleur, which the English army held under siege. Henry was encouraging his troops to attack the city again, even if they have to ‘close the wall with English dead’.

KING HENRY V:
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O’erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call’d fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry ‘God for Harry, England, and Saint George!’

Like most quotes by the Bard, this one grows more meaningful to me the older I get: to think own self be true.

@stranger_in_a_strange_land, I was wrong about Edward III. The quote you led off with is from Julius Ceasar:

ANTONY:
Blood and destruction shall be so in use
And dreadful objects so familiar
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quarter’d with the hands of war;
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds:
And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of war;
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.

Shit man, that Ben Jonson sucks!

@ratboy LOL.

@Pandora Some scholars think that Hamlet is not telling the truth when he expresses his disappointment. Your idea seems like a good possibility to me though.

I think they forget that writters will often interject their own thoughts and I don’t think Shakespeare had a high opinion of the human race. Most of his views were pessamistic at best. One can’t blame him with the era he was born in. However I think he also saw possibilities in man but made sure to put it in people faces that no matter how high and mighty, they were not Gods, but very flawed and that failure is a part of the human condition. @marina

“Oft expectation fails, and most oft where most it promises.”

@hawaii_jake This was a fun question. It lead to some interesting insites. :)

@Pandora : Glad you liked it. It was my pleasure to ask. I’ve also enjoyed the responses.

This is specially for @CyanoticWasp

Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep
Will make me sleep again; and then in dreaming
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again.

@downtide, thanks. That wasn’t the long quote you mentioned though, was it?

“To be or not to be? That is the question!”

That question hits us hard, right in the heart . . . and gut! Are we allowing ourselves to be who we really are or are we giving a perception of who we want people to think we are? Often we fool ourselves and that can be dangerous. We need to learn who we are and acknowledge what we learned about ourselves, embrace it, and then enjoy the rest of our lives by being true to ourselves.

“Never anything can be amiss, if simpleness and duty tender it.” A Midsummer Night’s Dream