Tax Lawyer's Blog

Shakespeare, in order to be truly understood and maximally appreciated, must be read in context. Yanking out single quotes or catch phrases does not do him or his works justice.

But, still, it’s worth noting the many Shakespeare aphorisms, phrases and coinages that have become a part of our everyday language.

Here are some of my favorites:

O! I am Fortune’s fool.

Romeo and Juliet

You take my life when you take the means whereby I live.

The Merchant of Venice

The course of true love never did run smooth.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

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

Julius Caesar

There is no evil angel but Love.

Love’s Labour’s Lost

The native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pitch and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

Hamlet

Action is eloquence.

Coriolanus

Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides:
Who cover faults, at last shame them derides.

King Lear

Why then, can one desire too much of a good thing?

As You Like It

Come, civil night,
Thou sober-suited matron, all in black.

Romeo and Juliet

Now it is the time of nigh
That the graves, all gaping wide,
Every one lets forth his sprite
In the church-way paths to glide.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.

Macbeth

O God! that one might read the book of fate.

King Henry IV, Part II

Like madness is the glory of this life
As this pomp shows to a little oil and root.

The Life of Timon of Athens

What is the city but the people?

Coriolanus 

A peace above all earthly dignities,
A still and quiet conscience.

King Henry VIII

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

Hamlet

Infirmity doth still neglect all office
Whereto our health is bound; we are not ourselves
When nature, being oppressed, commands the mind
To suffer with the body.

King Lear

Oftentimes excusing of a fault
Doth make the fault the worse by the excuse.

King John

‘Tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers.

Romeo and Juliet

Live in thy shame, but die not shame with thee!

Richard II

This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune (often the surfeits of our own behaviour) we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars: as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treacherous by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star!

King Lear

O father, what a hell of witchcraft lies
In the small orb of one particular tear.

A Lover’s Complaint

One may smile, and smile, and be a villain!

Hamlet

Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill.

Romeo and Juliet

Murder’s out of tune,
And sweet revenge grows harsh.

Othello

War is no strife
To the dark house and the detested wife.

All’s Well That Ends Well

Sable Night, mother of Dread and Fear,
Upon the world dim darkness doth display,
And in her vaulty prison stows the Day.

The Rape of Lucrece

Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.

Othello

Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving.

Othello

Nought’s had, all’s spent,
Where our desire is got without content.

Macbeth

Neither a borrower nor a lender be; for loan oft loses both itself and friend.

Hamlet

They do not love that do not show their love.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona

My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale,
And every tale condemns me for a villain.

Richard III

Time … thou ceaseless lackey to eternity.

The Rape of Lucrece

Conscience doth make cowards of us all.

Hamlet

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

Troilus and Cressida 

Let every man be master of his time.

Macbeth

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

The Tempest

Good things of day begin to droop and drowse;
While night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.

Macbeth

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.

Macbeth