Sourced and curated.

Hamlet · 1616

★ 8.7

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date.

God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us.

Shakespeare's Sonnets · 1609

★ 8.6

Treatise · Political literature · Philosophical literature

Niccolo Machiavelli

The Prince · 1532

★ 7.9

Long is the way And hard, that out of Hell leads up to Light.

Paradise Lost · 1667

★ 7.8

My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep. The more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite.

1597

★ 7.8

O fairest of Creation, last and best Of all God's works.

Paradise Lost · 1667

★ 7.8

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever, One foot in sea and one on shore, To one thing constant never.

Much Ado About Nothing · 1600

★ 7.8

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: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals-And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

Hamlet · 1616

★ 7.3

But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, Nor shall Death brag thou wand’rest in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st. So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Shakespeare's Sonnets · 1609

★ 7.2

Eat no onions nor garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath.

A Midsummer Night's Dream · 1599

★ 7.2

Come what come may, Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.

Macbeth · 1616

★ 7.2

Her rash hand in evil hour Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she ate: Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe That all was lost.

Paradise Lost · 1667

★ 7.1

See what a ready tongue suspicion hath!

Henry IV, Part 2 · 1597

★ 7.1

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red... I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound.

Shakespeare's Sonnets · 1609

★ 7.1

Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.

Timon of Athens · 1616

★ 7.1

Of Man's First Disobedience, and the fruit Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste Brought Death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat, Sing, Heav'nly Muse.

Paradise Lost · 1667

★ 7.1

What in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support; That to the height of this great Argument I may assert Eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men.

Paradise Lost · 1667

★ 7.1

All rising to great place is by a winding stair.

Finally we shall place the Sun himself at the center of the Universe. All this is suggested by the systematic procession of events and the harmony of the whole Universe, if we only face the facts, as they say, "with both eyes open."

1625

★ 7.0

Scientific literature

Nicolaus Copernicus

On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres · 1543

★ 7.0

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

Ancient times were the youth of the world.

Julius Caesar · 1599

★ 7.0

Philosophical literature

1605

★ 7.0

Chiefly, the mould of a man's fortune is in his own hands.

1625

★ 7.0

He’s loved of the distracted multitude, Who like not in their judgment, but their eyes.

Hamlet · 1616

★ 7.0

I am not in the roll of common men.

Henry IV, Part 1 · 1597

★ 7.0

There lives not three good men unhanged in England, and one of them is fat and grows old.

Henry IV, Part 1 · 1597

★ 7.0

The joys of parents are secret, and so are their griefs and fears.

Happy is he who, like Ulysses, has made a glorious voyage.

1625

★ 7.0

Poem

Joachim du Bellay

Les Regrets · 1558

★ 6.9

Frailty, thy name is woman!

Hamlet · 1616

★ 6.9

Good counselors lack no clients.

Measure for Measure · 1616

★ 6.9

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.

1625

★ 6.9

God Almighty first planted a garden; and, indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.

1625

★ 6.9

Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.

Hamlet · 1616

★ 6.5

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.

Julius Caesar · 1599

★ 6.4

The whirligig of time brings in his revenges.

Twelfth Night · 1602

★ 6.4

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.

Love comforteth like sunshine after rain.

Macbeth · 1616

★ 6.4

Poem · Narrative poem

Political literature · Philosophical literature

Venus and Adonis · 1593

★ 6.3

Whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasions for it.

Niccolo Machiavelli

Discourses on Livy · 1531

★ 6.2

How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees?

Othello · 1604

★ 6.2

Kindness in women, not their beauteous looks, Shall win my love.

The Taming of the Shrew · 1594

★ 6.1

We know what we are but know not what we may be.

Hamlet · 1616

★ 6.1

Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.

Much Ado About Nothing · 1600

★ 5.7

My salad days, When I was green in judgment.

Antony and Cleopatra · 1607

★ 5.7

Good night, good night. Parting is such sweet sorrow That I shall say “Good night” till it be morrow.

1597

★ 5.6

Men at some time are masters of their fates. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Julius Caesar · 1599

★ 5.6

My age is as a lusty winter, Frosty but kindly.

As You Like It · 1616

★ 5.6

Who overcomes By force hath overcome but half his foe.

A prince being thus obliged to know well how to act as a beast must imitate the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves.

Paradise Lost · 1667

★ 5.6

Treatise · Political literature · Philosophical literature

Niccolo Machiavelli

The Prince · 1532

★ 5.5

A jest's prosperity lies in the ear Of him that hears it, never in the tongue Of him that makes it.

Love's Labour's Lost · 1597

★ 5.5

O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name, Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.

1597

★ 5.5

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

The Merchant of Venice · 1598

★ 5.5

His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you have them, they are not worth the search.

The Merchant of Venice · 1598

★ 5.5

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interrèd with their bones.

Julius Caesar · 1599

★ 5.5

But be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ‘em.

Twelfth Night · 1602

★ 5.5

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

Speak the truth and shame the Devil.

Twelfth Night · 1602

★ 5.5

Novel · Satirical fiction · Satire

Francois Rabelais

Gargantua and Pantagruel · 1564

★ 5.5

I find that the best goodness I have has some tincture of vice.

Extreme fear can neither fight nor fly.

Essays · 1580

★ 5.5

Poem · Narrative poem

The Rape of Lucrece · 1594

★ 5.5

He hath eaten me out of house and home.

Henry IV, Part 2 · 1597

★ 5.5

How apt the poor are to be proud!

Twelfth Night, Or What You Will · 1602

★ 5.5

Time’s the king of men. He’s both their parent, and he is their grave, And gives them what he will, not what they crave.

Pericles, Prince of Tyre · 1608

★ 5.5

Sweet are the uses of adversity, Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head. And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

As You Like It · 1616

★ 5.5

The apparel oft proclaims the man.

Hamlet · 1616

★ 5.4

Truly man is a marvelously vain, diverse, and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgement on him.

Essays · 1580

★ 5.4

It happens as with the cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.

Essays · 1580

★ 5.4

Press not a falling man too far!

Boast not of what thou would'st have done, but do What then thou would'st.

Henry VIII · 1613

★ 5.4

Tragedy (play) · Tragedy

They wonder much to hear that gold, which in itself is so useless a thing, should be everywhere so much esteemed, that even men for whom it was made, and by whom it has its value, should yet be thought of less value than it is.

1671

★ 5.4

Satire · Political literature

Thomas More

Utopia · 1516

★ 5.3

Poem

And he that strives to touch the stars, Oft stumbles at a straw.

Edmund Spenser

1579

★ 5.3

For truth itself does not have the privilege to be employed at any time and in every way; its use, noble as it is, has its circumscriptions and limits.

Essays · 1580

★ 5.3

But miserable most, to love unloved? This you should pity rather than despise.

A Midsummer Night's Dream · 1599

★ 5.3

Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more.

Julius Caesar · 1599

★ 5.3

Brevity is the soul of wit.

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.

Hamlet · 1616

★ 5.3

Political literature

Areopagitica · 1644

★ 5.3

You and I are past our dancing days.

The house of everyone is to him as his castle and fortress, as well for his defence against injury and violence, as for his repose

1597

★ 5.2

Legal opinion · Legal writing

Edward Coke

Semayne's Case · 1603

★ 5.2

Letter

I am much occupied with the investigation of physical causes. My aim in this is to show that the celestial machine is not similar to a divine animated being, but similar to a clock.

Johannes Kepler

1605

★ 5.2

I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

Shakespeare's Sonnets · 1609

★ 5.2

The flow'ry way that leads to the broad gate and the great fire.