William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare – 23 April 1616) was an English poet, playwright, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet, and the "Bard of Avon". His extant works, including collaborations, consist of approximately 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth23 April 1564
I praise God for you, sir: your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious; pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange with-out heresy.
Help, master, help! here's a fish hangs in the net, like a poor man's right in the law; 'twill hardly come out.
The horn, the horn, the lusty horn Is not a thing to laugh to scorn.
To lapse in fulness Is sorer than to lie for need, and falsehood Is worse in kings than beggars.
A jest's prosperity lies in the ear Of him that hears it, never in the tongue Of him that makes it.
And in some perfumes there is more delight than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know that music hath a far more pleasing sound.
Delivers in such apt and gracious words that aged ears play truant at his tales; And younger hearings are quite ravished; So sweet and voluble is his discourse.
You told a lie, an odious damned lie; Upon my soul, a lie, a wicked lie.
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.
Well, God's above all; and there be souls must be saved, and there be souls must not be saved.
Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound Upon a wheel of fire; that mine own tears Do scald like molten lead.
GLOUCESTER: I do not know that Englishman alive With whom my soul is any jot at odds, More than the infant that is born to-night: I thank my God for my humility.
By the apostle Paul, shadows tonight Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard Than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers.
Love adds a precious seeing to the eye.