Quotes about Shakespeare

That's why my soul always reverts to the Old Testament and to Shakespeare. There at least one feels that it's human beings talking. There people hate, people love, people murder their enemy and curse his descendants through all generations, there people sin.

Even if the words were terrible, even though it were a Shakespeare, a Byron, or a Shelley who broke the silence,20 the word always retains its redeeming power, because all despair and all the horror of evil expressed in one word are not as awful as silence.

ABYSM  (ABY'SM)   n.s.[abysme, old Fr. now written contractedly abîme.]A gulf; the same with abyss. My good stars, that were my former guides,Have empty left their orbs, and shot their firesInto the abysm of hell.Shakespeare'sAntony and Cleopatra.

Italy during Shakespeare's time had citizens of all cultures and colors. To pretend that it did not is ignorance. And I don't waste my time on ignorance.

We must be free or die, who speak the tongueThat Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals holdWhich Milton held.

We must be free or die, who speak the tongue that Shakespeare spoke: the faith and morals hold which Milton held.

I used to start my questionnaires by asking, 'Which would you rather hear on the radio tonight — Jack Benny or a Shakespeare play?' If the respondent said Shakespeare, I knew he was a liar and broke off the interview.

I cannot marry the facts of William Shakespeare to his verse: Other men had led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought, but this man is in wide contrast.

Our speculations about Shakespeare are almost as multifarious and foolish as our speculations about the maker of the universe, and, like those, are frequently concerned to establish that his works were not made by him but by another person of the same name.

Poets like Shakespeare know more about poetry than any $25 an hour man.

If we wish to know the force of human genius, we should read Shakespeare. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning, we may study his commentators.

Looking for God-or Heaven-by exploring space is like reading or seeing all Shakespeare's plays in the hope that you will find Shakespeare as one of the characters.