Favorite lines from Shakespeare's works

[Atreyu]

I did a search for this, but was surprised when I couldn’t find any threads with a title relating to favorite Shakespeare lines.

Hard to narrow it down, but my personal favorite is probably this soliloquoy from Macbeth (my personal favorite of the Shakespearean tragedies), delivered by the title character after hearing of his wife’s suicide:

“She should have died hereafter:
There would have been time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
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 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, Act V, Scene v, 18-29)
Any Dopers out there have their own personal favorites?

[sub]I’m assuming that since Shakespeare’s works are in the public domain, there will be no problem with quoting his material. Right? [/sub]

[Fred]

As soon as I read the thread title, I thought of that exact speech.

Other than that, I dug most of Othello’s final speech, but maybe that’s just me.

[Northern_Piper]

“Exit, pursued by a bear.”

[Briny_Deep]

This little exchange is a quirky favorite of mine:

Hor.
My lord, I came to see your father’s funeral.

Ham.
I prithee do not mock me, fellow-student.
I think it was to see my mother’s wedding.

Hor.
Indeed, my lord, it follow’d hard upon.

Ham.
Thrift, thrift, Horatio! The funeral bak’d meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.

[Violet]

One of many:

Thou art so leaky that we must leave thee to thy sinking.

– from Antony and Cleopatra

[SPOOFE]

I’ve always been partial to the Porter’s monologue from “the Scottish play” (bah, fuck the superstition… Macbeth, dammit, MACBETH!). But that’s primarily because a friend once told me all the proofs for his theory that the Porter is the most important character to the play.

[Bernard_Marx]

Not having my trusty “Complete works of” to hand I can’t give act/scene references, but from MacBeth:

“I will not yield,
To kiss the ground before young Malcolm’s feet,
And to be baited with the rabble’s curse.
Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane,
And thou opposed, being of no woman born,
Yet I will try the last. Before my body
I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,
And damn’d be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!”

and from *Henry V *the whole Agincourt speech - “we few, we happy few” and all that. Tres noble. Make me want to be a better person.

[dantheman]

If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour!

• Twelfth Night, Act I, scene i

[Katisha]

Mmmmmm…Shakespeare…

I’ve only got time for one right now, though. This is from Richard II (3.2; don’t ask me for line numbers off the top of my head ;)):

No matter where – of comfort no man speak!
Let’s talk of graves, and worms, and epitaphs,
Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.
Let’s choose executors and talk of wills;
And yet not so, for what can we bequeath
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Our lands, our lives, and all are Bolingbroke’s,
And nothing can we call our own but death
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings:
How some have been deposed, some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed,
Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed,
All murdered – for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court, and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be feared, and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit
As if this flesh which walls about our life
Were brass impregnable; and, humored thus,
Comes at the last, and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall – and farewell king!
Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence; throw away respect,
Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while:
I live with bread like you, feel want,
Taste grief, need friends – subjected thus,
How can you say to me I am a king?

Oh yeah…great stuff, that. Will be back with more later.

[Potter]

From sonnet XVII -

If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say 'This poet lies;

There’s so much to quote, but this? It’s so perfectly simple and says so much. Beautiful.

[Eve]

“Old fashions please me best; I am not so nice,
To change true rules for old inventions.”

—Bianca, The Taming of the Shrew

[Eve]

. . . Actually the site I cut-and-pasted that quote from got it wrong! it should be “odd inventions.”

[Eve]

Ack!

“Hot potato, off his drawers, Puck will make amends!” [pulls Spoofe’s nose]

[Fretful_Porpentine]

*Originally posted by Northern Piper *
**“Exit, pursued by a bear.” **

“Enter a messenger with two heads and a hand.”

Richard III has some great one-liners:
“Simple, plain Clarence! I do love thee so
That I will shortly send thy soul to heaven –
If heaven will take the present at our hands.”

Lady Anne: Villain, thou know’st no law of God nor man:
No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity.
Richard: But I know none, and therefore am no beast.

And I absolutely adore Mark Antony’s suicide, which is much too long to copy out here.

[h.sapiens]

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V:

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
if you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to 'scape the serpent’s tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.
Also from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V:

Joy, gentle friends! joy and fresh days of love
Accompany your hearts!

Comes in handy as a toast at weddings!

[TV_time]

“First, kill all the lawyers.”*

• in Romeo and Juliet as Mercutio lies dying having been asked by Romeo if he is all right,

“'Tis not as deep as a well, nor as wide as a church door, but 'twill serve… Ask for me tomorrow and you will find me a grave man.”*

-in Macbeth a discription of the execution of the original thane of Cawdor.

“Nothing became his life so much as his leaving it.”*

[sub]*keep in mind this is being done by memory so the quotes may not be exact.[/sub]

[Avalonian]

Hamlet Act I, scene ii is full of some amazing passages…

HAMLET: A little more than kin, and less than kind.

HAMLET: Not so, my lord; I am too much i’ the sun.

HAMLET: 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly: these indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play:
But I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

And this last, from Hamlet, Act II, scene ii, is a comedic masterpiece when performed well, with Hamlet playing Polonius like a six-string fiddle.

LORD POLONIUS: Do you know me, my lord?

HAMLET: Excellent well; you are a fishmonger.

LORD POLONIUS: Not I, my lord.

HAMLET: Then I would you were so honest a man.

LORD POLONIUS: Honest, my lord!

HAMLET: Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be
one man picked out of ten thousand.

LORD POLONIUS: That’s very true, my lord.

HAMLET: For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a
god kissing carrion,–Have you a daughter?

LORD POLONIUS: I have, my lord.

HAMLET: Let her not walk i’ the sun: conception is a
blessing: but not as your daughter may conceive.
Friend, look to 't.

LORD POLONIUS: [Aside] How say you by that? Still harping on my
daughter: yet he knew me not at first; he said I
was a fishmonger: he is far gone, far gone: and
truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for
love; very near this. I’ll speak to him again.

What do you read, my lord?

HAMLET: Words, words, words.

LORD POLONIUS: What is the matter, my lord?

HAMLET: Between who?

LORD POLONIUS: I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.

HAMLET: Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here
that old men have grey beards, that their faces are
wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and
plum-tree gum and that they have a plentiful lack of
wit, together with most weak hams: all which, sir,
though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet
I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down, for
yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if like a crab
you could go backward.

LORD POLONIUS: [Aside] Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't.

Will you walk out of the air, my lord?

HAMLET: Into my grave.

LORD POLONIUS: Indeed, that is out o’ the air.

[Aside] How pregnant sometimes his replies are! a happiness
that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity
could not so prosperously be delivered of. I will
leave him, and suddenly contrive the means of
meeting between him and my daughter.

My honourable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you.

HAMLET: You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will
more willingly part withal: except my life, except my life, except my life.

[Intaglio]

Et Tu Brutus, and Beware the Ides of March - Julius Ceasar

[jjimm]

Best evocation of depression I done ever read (Hamlet Act 2 Scene 2):

I have of late–but
wherefore I know not–lost all my mirth, forgone all
custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily
with my disposition that this goodly frame, the
earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted
with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to
me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! 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! And yet, to me,
what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not
me: no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling
you seem to say so.

[gallows_fodder]

The line in bold occasionally pops into my consciousness at inopportune moments:

[quote]

I grant him bloody,
Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful,
Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin
That has a name: but there’s no bottom, none,
In my voluptuousness: your wives, your daughters,
Your matrons and your maids, could not fill up
The cistern of my lust, and my desire
All continent impediments would o’erbear
That did oppose my will: better Macbeth
Than such an one to reign.

–Macbeth, Act IV, Scene III

[quote]

Richard III and Othello have some great lines (I love Iago’s simple “I am not what I am”), but my favorite phrase of all is from the Taming of the Shrew, in which Petruchio berates the tailor and calls him “thou quantity!”

(King Lear has some good insults, too – one-trunk-inheriting slave, thou eater of broken meats!, etc.)