What is your favourite Shakespeare quote?

This precious stone set in the silver sea
This blessed plot
This earth
This realm
This England

Richard 11

Studied King Lear for A Level and was struck by the quote "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child." (about Goneril and Regan.)
Cordelia was my favourite heroine.

And this, which I remember from school. Merchant of Venice. (bit long to be a quote)

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

Reminds me of a hot summer night when DD and I sat in the garden while un-sleeping grandson played quietly in his sandbox and the garden smelled so summery.

When we did Macbeth in the 4th form with the dreaded Miss Munro, for some reason Fleance's line
'O Mother he has killed me'
had us painfully clutching our sides in paroxysms of giggles, hoping to escape her terrifying glare and the inevitable caustic comment

Goodnight sweet prince. And may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

So beautiful.

Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble!

Also like "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to
deceive".

Oops, sorry, (not Shakespeare).

annie touched on it first, I think.

Sorry it was greduster's quote.

'Give every man thine ear
But few thy voice
Take each man's censure
But reserve thy judgement'

Which comes from the same speech as Hilda and Annie's.

Hard to live up to sometimes

There would seem to be an apt quotation for every human situation (that's not a quote btw )

Tho she be but little she is fierce (a quote my daughter used in a piece of art work for our little fighter born at 27 weeks gestation

We are such stuff as dreams are made on and our little life is rounded by a sleep.

Yes, hildaj, that one is a particular favourite of mine too. "Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds". So perfectly expressed!

I like the sonnets.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments
Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remover to remove.
Oh no! It is an ever fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken
T'is the star to ev'ry wandering barque
Whose worth's unknown although his height be taken
Loves not times fool
Tho' rosy lips and cheeks beneath his bending sickle's compass come.
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.

What a brilliant man he was!

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be
For loan oft loses both itself and friend
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
And this, above all,
To thine own self be true
For it follows as the day the night
Thou canst not then be false to any man."

Sage advice for all in any age.

not really a quote as such but my Grandad used to say Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, gloomily, when blossom blew off the apple trees too early.

DH bought me a t-shirt with "She may be little but she be fierce" on it and my DSs nodded when they saw it. I can't think why!

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,

Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

(From As You Like It)There is a lot more in between too, but it is rather long to post but poignant.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be (Hamlet)

The course of true love never did run smooth (Midsummer Night's Dream)

kitty Let Me Not To The Marriage of True Minds that is lovely too and chosen by someone dear to me for a reading at their marriage.

“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.”

The quality of mercy is not strained etc.....
We read the Merchant of Venice for my GCE exam and surprisingly I really enjoyed it didn't think it would be my thing,sadly haven't read anymore

Annie, we always quoted that to our children and encouraged them to live their lives accordingly. It hasn't necessarily made our lives as parents easy.

I have two pieces of mottoware with that on.

I love the sonnet Let Me Not To The Marriage of True Minds.

For the life of me I can't remember the number but I'm sitting with mum so can't check!

Last summer, visiting the RSC gift shop in Stratford, I bought a bright pink pencil for DGD's teacher. Soon afterwards she commented that the quote was a very appropriate description of our feisty but loveable 5 yr-old. So my current favourite quote is
'She may be little but she is fierce!'

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.

I find this inspiring
1

I don't have a brain for remembering quotes, but found this and I really like the one about father and son (background picture of a lion)

www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/william_shakespeare.html