William Shakespeare

“How far that little candle throws his beams!
So shines a good deed in a naughty world.”

The Merchant of Venice, 1596-1598. Play.

“Now, God be praised, that to believing souls gives light in darkness, comfort in despair.”

“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.”

“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”

“When we are born we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.”

“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, his acts being seven ages.”

“Faith, there hath been many great men that have flattered the people who ne'er loved them.”

“Love is too young to know what conscience is.”

“When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.”

“Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.”

“Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.”

William Shakespeare's Sonnet 73

“A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age.”

“The golden age is before us, not behind us.”

“There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face.”

“I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad and to travel for it too!”

“In time we hate that which we often fear.”

“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.”

“The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination; all compact.”

“Speak low, if you speak love.”

“They do not love that do not show their love.”

“Men are April when they woo, December when they wed. Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives.”

“I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.”

“If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me.”

“Let every eye negotiate for itself and trust no agent.”