Famous Shakespeare Quotes and What They Mean

From Hamlet.

• “To be or not to be, that is the question”

  Hamlet, Act 3, scene 1

  Hamlet weighs whether it is better to endure life’s troubles or to end them, and decides that fear of what comes after death holds us back.

• “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”

  Marcellus, Act 1, scene 4

  Spoken by a guard, not Hamlet, as the Ghost appears: something is deeply wrong at the heart of the kingdom.

• “This above all: to thine own self be true”

  Polonius, Act 1, scene 3

  Advice to his son, from a man who spends the play spying on everyone, including that son.

• “Brevity is the soul of wit”

  Polonius, Act 2, scene 2

  Good sense is best said briefly, announced in the middle of a very long speech.

• “Though this be madness, yet there is method in ’t”

  Polonius, Act 2, scene 2

  Even Polonius hears the sense beneath Hamlet’s pretended madness. The source of “method in the madness.”

• “The lady doth protest too much, methinks”

  Gertrude, Act 3, scene 2

  The Player Queen’s vows never to remarry are too insistent to believe. To “protest” here means to vow.

• “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio”

  Hamlet, Act 5, scene 1

  Holding the skull of the jester who carried him as a child. Often misquoted as “I knew him well.”

• “The rest is silence”

  Hamlet, Act 5, scene 2

  Hamlet’s last words.

From Macbeth.

• “Fair is foul, and foul is fair”

  The witches, Act 1, scene 1

  Good and evil have changed places, and nothing will be what it seems.

• “Is this a dagger which I see before me,
  The handle toward my hand?”

  Macbeth, Act 2, scene 1

  Just before the murder, his imagination is already committing the crime.

• “Double, double toil and trouble;
  Fire burn, and cauldron bubble”

  The witches, Act 4, scene 1

  Their spell over the cauldron. Often misquoted as “Bubble, bubble.”

• “Out, damned spot, out, I say!”

  Lady Macbeth, Act 5, scene 1

  Walking in her sleep, she tries to scrub away blood that only she can see.

• “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow”

  Macbeth, Act 5, scene 5

  On hearing of his wife’s death, he sees life as “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

• “Lay on, Macduff”

  Macbeth, Act 5, scene 8

  His last words, inviting Macduff to attack. Often misquoted as “Lead on.”

From Romeo and Juliet.

• “A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life”

  The Chorus, Prologue

  The lovers are doomed by the stars before the story begins.

• “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?
  It is the East, and Juliet is the sun”

  Romeo, Act 2, scene 2

  In the dark orchard, Juliet is his source of light.

• “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?”

  Juliet, Act 2, scene 2

  “Wherefore” means “why,” not “where”: why must he be a Montague?

• “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
  By any other word would smell as sweet”

  Juliet, Act 2, scene 2

  A name is only a label. Many editions print “name” instead of “word.”

• “Parting is such sweet sorrow”

  Juliet, Act 2, scene 2

  Saying goodbye hurts, but the sorrow is sweet because it shows their love.

• “A plague o’ both your houses!”

  Mercutio, Act 3, scene 1

  Dying, he curses both families for a feud that was never his.

From Othello.

• “O, beware, my lord, of jealousy!
  It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
  The meat it feeds on”

  Iago, Act 3, scene 3

  Jealousy torments the one who feels it. Iago warns against it while doing all he can to create it.

• “Who steals my purse steals trash”

  Iago, Act 3, scene 3

  Money can be replaced, a good name cannot, says the man about to destroy one.

• “She loved me for the dangers I had passed,
  And I loved her that she did pity them”

  Othello, Act 1, scene 3

  The only “witchcraft” he used to win Desdemona was his stories and her sympathy.

• “Put out the light, and then put out the light”

  Othello, Act 5, scene 2

  A candle can be relit; a life cannot.

• “All the world’s a stage,
  And all the men and women merely players”

  Jaques, As You Like It, Act 2, scene 7

  The start of the speech on the seven ages of a man’s life, from infancy to old age.

• “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
  But in ourselves, that we are underlings”

  Cassius, Julius Caesar, Act 1, scene 2

  We cannot blame fate for our weakness. Cassius is urging Brutus to act against Caesar.

• “Beware the ides of March”

  The Soothsayer, Julius Caesar, Act 1, scene 2

  A warning Caesar ignores. He is killed on March 15.

• “Et tu, Brutè?”

  Caesar, Julius Caesar, Act 3, scene 1

  “You too, Brutus?” Caesar’s shock at seeing his friend among his killers.

• “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
  I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him”

  Antony, Julius Caesar, Act 3, scene 2

  The opening of the funeral speech in which Antony turns the crowd against Caesar’s killers.

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

  Caesar, Julius Caesar, Act 2, scene 2

  The fearful suffer death again and again in imagination; the brave face it only once.

• “The course of true love never did run smooth”

  Lysander, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 1, scene 1

  Lovers always meet obstacles, a truth the whole comedy goes on to prove.

• “Now is the winter of our discontent
  Made glorious summer by this sun of York”

  Richard, Richard III, Act 1, scene 1

  Often quoted as if the winter were continuing; in fact Richard means the bad times are over.

• “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown”

  The King, Henry IV, Part 2, Act 3, scene 1

  Power brings worry and sleepless nights.

• “Nothing will come of nothing”

  Lear, King Lear, Act 1, scene 1

  Lear’s warning to Cordelia when she refuses to flatter him. It sets his tragedy in motion.

• “We are such stuff
  As dreams are made on, and our little life
  Is rounded with a sleep”

  Prospero, The Tempest, Act 4, scene 1

  Life is as brief and insubstantial as a dream, ending in the sleep of death.

• “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”

  Sonnet 18

  The most famous love poem in English, which ends by promising the beloved eternal life in verse.

• “When, in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes”

  Sonnet 29

  An outcast’s despair, lifted at a single thought of the beloved.

• “When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
  I summon up remembrance of things past”

  Sonnet 30

  Old griefs return in memory, until the thought of a friend ends them.

• “Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
  So do our minutes hasten to their end”

  Sonnet 60

  Time rushes on like the sea, and only verse can stand against it.

• “Let me not to the marriage of true minds
  Admit impediments”

  Sonnet 116

  True love does not change when circumstances change.

• “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”

  Sonnet 130

  A love poem that refuses to flatter, and is more sincere for it.

Shakespeare’s lines gathered by subject.