What is your favourite Shakespeare quote?

Love all the quotes!
As a teenager in the throes of unrequited love - "what shall Cordelia do, love and be silent" was meaningful! I also felt sad that her father, King Lear didn't understand his three daughters very well!
The other quote that I have always liked is from Julius Caesar " the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings" a reminder that we mustn't give up but with effort can shape our lives. Thanks to a really good English teacher that I really enjoyed the plays we read - but never found them as entertaining to read on my own!

"To thine own self be true"
from Hamlet

We are all 'merely players' entropy!

Hist! Thou black and midnight hags. (The Scottish Play)
f allthe world's a stage, where does the audience sit?

^If music be the food of love play on.
Give me excess of it that, surfeiting,
the appetite may sicken and so die^
Yes, Twelfth Night

I used one in an answer to Terribull above

Don't 'get in a pickle' over it
Never mind, 'All's well that ends well'

www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/william-shakespeares-450th-birthday-50-everyday-phrases-that-came-from-the-bard-9275254.html

You may not understand it LesleyC (and that is a shame, bad teaching I would imagine!) but I would think that you may use many of his quotes in everyday life - so many have entered the English language as they are so apt.

Midsummer Nights Dream, sorry!

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight
Oberon, Act 2 Scene 1

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing

Macbeth - and more or less sums up my philosophy of life

(thou) 'cream faced loon'
(Macbeth). Not so much for the insult but because it brings back memories of childhood, and my brother teasing me with this and similar jibes. I didn't know it came from Shakespeare at the time - I was around 6 or 7 years old maybe, and he was 10 years older.

I like Jingle bells quotes. I know I will get yelled at and I know Shakespeare is wonderful and the language unsurpassed but I am TOTALLY ALLERGIC TO SHAKESPEARE!

I went to a one of the top academic schools in England and we had to do a Shakespeare a term for seven years, even if we didn't do A level Eng Lit. I have had it up to here and you would get me near the Globe. Rather stick pins in my eyes.

Although I have occasionally enjoyed a jazzed up version such as a Royal Court production of Twelfth Night, which was my Olevel text. Got on the wrong side of the English teacher when I said I though Olivia was a vapid creature, and of course she was Miss Ps heroine. Also she didn't like when I disagreed with her that it was a tragedy as well as comedy because of Malvolio - got what he deserved to my mind. A few years ago on Friends Reunited someone posted that what Miss P didn't know about courtly love wasn't worth knowing. So useful in the 60s.

Now all shout me down - or is there anyone else out there that feels the same?

I've never understood a word of Shakespeare. It was knocked out of me having to learn it at school.

I used to like this when I was overweight (I'm not now):-

Yon Cassius hath a lean and hungry look
Give me men about me that are fat.

Julius Caesar

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

I agree with Jalima

"Better three hours too soon than a minute too late."

My DM always added "and a lifetime of regret" which was always very sobering. I hasten to say that she was a fun person too.

If music be the food of love play on. Thinks its Twelfth Night.

"Daffodils, that come before the swallow dares/And take the winds of March with beauty"

"There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so." Sounds like Hamlet but I'm not sure now!

(Of an old woman): "rump-fed runnion".

There was a star danced and under it I was born

So shines a good deed
And it is a naughty world .

I was up at the cathedral today and the tea lights and candles were busy. One of the clergy said he couldn't understand why people wanted to light candles so much. I quoted one of my favourites "how far that little candle throws his beams Like a good deed in a naughty world"

There is a lot more Terribull but that is the nub of it, the quote.

A good one!

I think I've left some out that's all I can remember