A Little Shakespeare Never Hurt Anyone

I was off work today, so I needed to occupy my mind. Television in the mid afternoon just doesn't offer enough to fuel my need for entertainment, so I went to the bookshelf. I looked at my "Classics" shelves because nearly everything on it is what I refer to as "meaty reads". As my fingers traveled each title, The Canterbury Tales (in the Old English), The Brothers Karamizov, The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe...or C.S. Lewis...or O. Henry (insert any classic author here..I'm big on complete works), and so on, I settled on Shakespeare. I didn't necessarily read thoroughly through this complete works, but I did begin to write down things that struck me. Perhaps it was my melancholy mood, or it might have just been my love of beautiful words and phrases, but as you will see below, there seems to have been a theme. Let me say, in the spirit of full disclosure, that I have always loved Shakespeare...ever since my British Lit class in high school. So I'm a bit partial to my Brits and their clever accents and funny words. Of course...they were also great at lovespeak. So take a seat and enjoy this little taste of the old Bard. A little Shakespeare never hurt anyone....


Hear my soul speak:
The very instant that I saw you, did
My heart fly to your service.(The Tempest)

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.(A Midsummer Night's Dream)

Eternity was in our lips and eyes,
Bliss in our brows' bent; none our parts so poor
But was a race of heaven.(Antony and Cleopatra)

Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.(Hamlet)


But love, first learned in a lady's eyes,
Lives not alone immured in the brain;
But, with the motion of all elements,
Courses as swift as thought in every power,
And gives to every power a double power,
Above their functions and their offices.(Love's Labours Lost)

One half of me is yours, the other half yours
Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours,
And so all yours. (The Merchant of Venice)

I love thee so, that, maugre all thy pride,
Nor wit nor reason can my passion hide.
Do not extort thy reasons from this clause,
For that I woo, thou therefore hast no cause
But rather reason thus with reason fetter,
Love sought is good, but given unsought better.(Twelfth Night)


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:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.(Sonnet 18)

For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings. (Sonnet 29)

All days are nights to see till I see thee,
And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me. (Sonnet 43)

The prize of all too precious you.(Sonnet 86)

Such is my love, to thee I so belong,
That for thy right myself will bear all wrong.(Sonnet 88)

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.(Sonnet 116)

Love is a spirit all compact of fire.(Venus and Adonis)

She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i'th' bud,
Feed on her damask cheek. She pined in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy
She sat like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief.
Was not this love indeed?(Twelfth Night)

See how she leans her cheek upon her hand.
O that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek.(Romeo and Juliet)

This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath,
May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.(Romeo and Juliet)

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. (Romeo and Juliet)