Shakespeare's quotes

What's in a name? That which we call a rose

Juliet:
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet meet and fall in love in Shakespeare's lyrical tale of "star-cross'd" lovers. They are doomed from the start as members of two warring families. Here Juliet tells Romeo that a name is an artificial and meaningless convention, and that she loves the person who is called "Montague", not the Montague name and not the Montague family. Romeo, out of his passion for Juliet, rejects his family name and vows, as Juliet asks, to "deny (his) father" and instead be "new baptized" as Juliet's lover. This one short line encapsulates the central struggle and tragedy of the play.

Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind

Helena:
"Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind."

In this soliloquy, Helena ponders the transforming power of love, noting that Cupid is blind. The lovesick Helena has been abandoned by her beloved Demetrius, because he loves the more attractive Hermia. Helena, while tall and fair, is not as lovely as Hermia. Helena finds it unfair that Demetrius dotes on Hermia's beauty, and she wishes appearances were contagious the way a sickness is so that she might look just like Hermia and win back Demetrius. The connection of love to eyesight and vision are matters of vital importance in this play about love and the confusion it sometimes brings.

We that are true lovers run into

Touchstone:
"We that are true lovers run into strange capers; but as all is mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal
in folly."

The professional court jester, Touchstone, shifts from acknowledging mortality to accepting the "folly" of love in nature in this scene from the pastoral satire, As You Like It. The lovers in the play, who represent "nature in love," all display a kind of folly. Touchstone has accompanied the Duke's daughter, Celia, into the forest with her friend and cousin, Rosalind, each taking on a series of comedic turns. Shakespeare's use of the traditional figure of the Jester, with his social role and traditional meaning, enabled him to embody a character who could epitomize the comedy's purpose while maintaining objectivity. Touchstone, in effect, presents life as it really is, ridiculing it because it is not ideal, as we wish it to be.

To sleep, perchance to dream

Hamlet:
"To sleep, perchance to dream-
ay, there's the rub."

This is part of Hamlet's famous soliloquy which begins "To be or not to be", and it reveals his thoughts of suicide. He has learned that his uncle killed his father, the late King, and married the king's wife, his mother. This foul deed has driven Hamlet nearly mad, and he seeks both revenge and the escape of death. He has been disconsolate since learning of the murder, from the ghost of his dead father. In this scene, he ponders suicide, "To die, to sleep-/No more." But he is tortured with the fear that there might not be peace even in death. "For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, /When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, /Must give us pause." Hamlet's moral and mental anguish is at its height in this soliloquy, which is the emotional centerpiece of the play.