81 quotes about shakespeare follow in order of popularity. Be sure to bookmark and share your favorites!

If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause and say, 'Here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.'

Martin Luther King Jr.

In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be.

Hubert H. Humphrey

I know not, sir, whether Bacon wrote the works of Shakespeare, but if he did not it seems to me that he missed the opportunity of his life.

James M. Barrie

You would no sooner ask me to play Shakespeare away from the Globe than you'd ask some rock star to make his new record on eight-track tape.

Mark Rylance

It's going to be interesting to see what the director does with this one. It's not going to be your classic Shakespeare play, it's going to be more modern. He's attempting to find a new way to discover the old.

Lucie Kolouchová

The inspiration for this program was a bit of outrage, that students were graduating in the State of New Jersey not having seen Shakespeare performed live.

Brian Crowe

The law in this case is an ass and an idiot, as Shakespeare says, because it's being used to silence the only true consumer advocate this state has.

Harvey Peyton

Cocoa? Cocoa! Damn miserable puny stuff, fit for kittens and unwashed boys. Did Shakespeare drink cocoa?

Shirley Jackson

Somebody had found a piece of wood of the right age to make a pretty convincing portrait of Shakespeare. It fooled historians for quite a long time.

Tarnya Cooper

Dr. Seuss is so creative, so inventive — I consider him the Shakespeare of children's literature. He opens up young children's minds in a way that can be a key to creative language use.

Pam Marshall

We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.

Robert Wilensky

People love the idea of encountering his face, Searching for Shakespeare.

Tarnya Cooper

I'll bet Shakespeare compromised himself a lot; anybody who's in the entertainment industry does to some extent.

Christopher Isherwood

`Was there ever,' cried he, `such stuff as great part of Shakespeare? Only one mustn't say so!'

George Iii

I am so far as I am aware not at all influenced by dramatists, expect for Shakespeare, who I have to say, it is impossible not to be influenced by if you hold language to be the major element of theatre.

Howard Barker

It's really important that those two [Shakespeare and contemporary playwrights] are both under the same umbrella, ... By putting Shakespeare there, you are holding him up as a model of how big a playwright's ambitions can be.

Oskar Eustis

This is one of the greatest thrills of my life. It's a wonderful college where they can teach you everything from Shakespeare to welding, and I'm just glad to be a part of it.

Alan K. Simpson

History is not the story of heroes entirely. It is often the story of cruelty and injustice and shortsightedness. There are monsters, there is evil, there is betrayal. That's why people should read Shakespeare and Dickens as well as history ~~ they will find the best, the worst, the height of noble attainment and the depths of depravity.

David C. Mccullough

I have no interest in Shakespeare and all that British nonsense... I just wanted to get famous and all the rest is hogwash.

Anthony Hopkins

I thought I'd begin by reading a sonnet by Shakespeare, but then I thought, why should I? He never reads any of mine.

Spike Milligan

It's really important that those two (Shakespeare and contemporary playwrights) are both under the same umbrella.

Oskar Eustis

We got kind of sloppy in the fourth quarter. They shut off Matt Shakespeare but we were able to get plenty of looks at the cage.

Jason Andalo

I should be soaring away with my head tilted slightly toward the gods, feeding on the caviar of Shakespeare. An actor must act.

Laurence Olivier, Sir

The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good.

Robert Graves

Shakespeare without Othello, Lear, Macbeth and Hamlet would be all too much like Hamlet without the prince.

Brand Blanshard

I am a genius who has written poems that will survive with the best of Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Keats.

Irving Layton

I've never done anything for money. My first love is things of limited commercial appeal. I could be happy doing Shakespeare for the rest of my life.

Karen Allen

It's incredibly moving to hear some of our greatest actors performing Shakespeare.

Judi Dench

It is a joy to have a cast of 19. You don't have that unless you are at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Conrad Bishop

I think that Shakespeare had his male side and his female side extremely well developed. And this was a great quality of the Elizabethan, all-around Renaissance man. They were not afraid of their male side and their female side co-existing. This somewhere along the line got lost. And then it got misunderstood.

Ben Kingsley

Now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations.

Orson Welles

When you do Shakespeare they think you must be intelligent because they think you understand what you're saying.

Helen Mirren

When he killed a calf he would do it in a high style, and make a speech. (About Shakespeare).

John Aubrey

The [anti-Shakespeare] theories are always pinned on two points.

James Shapiro

Queen Elizabeth liked Falstaff's character so much that she sent word that she'd like to see more of Falstaff. Shakespeare was one of the first to be obliged to resurrect a character.

Lynne Burroughs

Was there ever such stuff as great as part of Shakespeare? Only one must not say so! But what think you? - What? - Is there not sad stuff? What? - What?

George Iii

One of our efforts in doing a lot of Shakespeare is, the more we do it, the more proficient our students become, and the greater ability we have to make the stories clear for our audience. Once people come to a show, they're surprised by how accessible Shakespeare and his plots can be.

Jack Cirillo

Playing Shakespeare is really tiring. You never get to sit down, unless you're the king.

Josephine Hull

It was not like I was taking myself seriously and being like, OK, now I'm going to be an actress and I'm going to do a Shakespeare movie.

Gisele Bundchen

Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare ... animated, accessible prose and ... resonant panorama of Elizabethan England.

Stephen Greenblatt

I couldn't believe verse was supposed to be hard. It was a snap for me. I loved Shakespeare.

Ted Lange

The English people, a lot of them, would not be able to understand a word of spoken Shakespeare. There are people who do and I'm not denying they exist. But it's a far more philistine country than people think.

Colin Firth

I think academics are infuriating. For every expert on Shakespeare there is another one to cancel his theory out. It drives you up the wall. I think the greatest form of finding out the truth is through fantasy.

Joseph Fiennes

It was more exacting than Shakespeare. Every stammer was scripted.

James Foley

Everybody does Shakespeare differently. I'm trying to bring another feel to the piece. Shakespeare played to his audience, and I'm playing to mine.

Jake Kelly

A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599.

James Shapiro

I just wasn't interested in going to New York, my interest wasn't TV or film. It was always the stage, musicals, Shakespeare.

Cindy Genzano

Read not Milton, for he is dry; nor Shakespeare, for he wrote of common life.

C. S. Calverley

If Antarctica were music it would be Mozart. Art, and it would be Michelangelo. Literature, and it would be Shakespeare. And yet it is something even greater; the only place on earth that is still as it should be. May we never tame it.

Andrew Denton

I don't make much distinction between being a stand-up comic and acting Shakespeare - in fact, unless you're a good comedian, you're never going to be able to play Hamlet properly.

Ian McKellen

When I first started acting, and we would all sit down and talk about Shakespeare and how great it was, I thought well, I suppose it is.

Judy Davis

Enjoy the play as much as they would enjoy a Shakespeare play.

The Dispatch

Art and music are an integral part of learning. You can't study English literature and poetry without learning a Shakespeare sonnet.

William Ferguson

After all, Shakespeare wrote his plays for modern dress, and people have been doing it ever since. The idea of trying to recreate some historical version of the play seems to me to be very dangerous and to head for some kind of dead, museum idea of what theater is.

Paul Whitworth

Shakespeare was such a lover of theatre, and theatre is an illusion.

Dean Gilmour

I suspect this is the closest we're ever going to get to looking at the face of Shakespeare.

Tarnya Cooper

[Hope Davis, who appears in his new film,] Proof ... Hello? 'Shakespeare in Love'?

Hope Davis

A team is a team is a team. Shakespeare said that many times.

Dan Devine

I think so few kids rarely see theater anymore, especially Shakespeare. When they see it performed well, they realize it's not a boring story, and they can understand it.

Leslie Hunter

We know what the canon is, and people can argue whether you should study F. Scott Fitzgerald or D.H. Lawrence ... I probably would put Shakespeare right in the middle - on that, George Pell and I agree.

John Bell

I'm still working on doubling the actors. Shakespeare, of course, did that with a limited acting company. People would take on different roles. A man would become a woman ... he made crowd scenes out of very few people. We're going to have to do the very same thing.

Bob Valentine

PHYSIOGNOMY, n. The art of determining the character of another by the resemblances and differences between his face and our own, which is the standard of excellence. 'There is no art,' says Shakespeare, foolish man, 'To read the mind's construction in the face.' The physiognomists his portrait scan, And say: 'How little wisdom here we trace! He knew his face disclo.

Ambrose Bierce

Somebody could read about Shakespeare and get honors credit, but those kids who not only have to read Shakespeare but to act it and perform it didn't. That is the perfect illustration of why these students should get honors credit.

Brian Armstrong

As we say at home, ... Shakespeare may have written a few plays, but he can`t create drama like this.

Nick Faldo

I'd like see an ad with somebody listening to Mozart and reading Milton or Shakespeare.

Charles Moskos

I've got no need to prove to myself that I can do Shakespeare. I've done it.

Anthony Hopkins

We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

Robert Wilensky

Most people don't know that I am an accomplished dramatic actor... But I've performed in several Shakespeare productions including Hamlet, except in this version, Hamlet lives in an apartment with two women, and has to pretend he's gay so that the landlord won't evict him.

John Ritter

William Shakespeare has had an impact on the artistic imagination, on language, literature and all the performing arts, more profound and more widespread than any other writer who has ever lived.

Peter Selley

As an actor one does read Shakespeare and does try to learn the classics.

Will Kemp

You can find more traditional Shakespeare than we do. But what we want to bring to these works is energy, passion, freshness.

John Bradshaw

Going around in Shakespeare costumes [will] attract a lot attention, which is always good.

Vincent Barbatti

We're having a lot of success producing Shakespeare. Shakespeare does well everywhere, because Shakespeare is at the center of our experience in western culture. Shakespeare is playing well in every part of the world.

Charles Fee

I've been a huge fan of his since I started directing. For me, directing Beckett has the same rush I had when I was directing Shakespeare. It is sublime material, and when it works it is so powerful. It's some of the most exciting theater I've ever been part of.

Jonathan Fox

I think part of Kevin's notion of being involved with the Old Vic was because he wants to blood himself with Shakespeare.

Trevor Nunn

We have a fun record of ripping off Shakespeare. He was brilliant with narrative and complex, twisty plot turns.

Kirsten Smith

This is a good starter show for some of these kids who've never been onstage before, and we have several who are first-timers, but they're having fun with the roles and characters. It's not Shakespeare, but that's OK with us.

Jane Modlin

Shakespeare: The Biography.

Peter Ackroyd

I was tired of learning about Shakespeare and British writers.

Robert Webb

I think the festival does a good job of making Shakespeare accessible and helping to dispel this myth that Shakespeare is high-brow and difficult.

Rod Woehler

To judge therefore of Shakespeare by Aristotle's rule is like trying a man by the Laws of one Country who acted under those of another.

Elizabeth Montagu