What is your own very special piece of Shakespeare?

Question

Can you give me a quotation of your favourite piece of Shakespeare?

Mine is.....there are so many I cannot possibly make a choice!

I am not sure what category I should put this in so excuse me if I put in into Theatre & Acting.

Koenigsig how wrong you are. Sorry.

The tears are flowing here. Please do not stop.

I hope you do not mind but I am going to leave this to the vote as I feel than many people will benefit from your answers. I would like to thank you all for taking the time to write your favoured piece of Shakspeare. I have learnt a great deal from your answers myself.

Answer 1

The first argument between Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing:

Bea: I would rather hear my dog bark at a crow that to hear a man swear he loves me!

Ben: I would that my horse had the speed of your tongue!

Bea: I wonder that you still be talking Signor Benedick; nobody marks you!

Answer 2

We are such stuff / as dreams are made on, and our little life / is rounded with a sleep (The Tempest)

O, beware, my lord of jealousy; / It is the green-ey'd monster which doth mock / The meat it feeds on (Othello)

And who can forget the Crispin's Day speech in Henry V? Is so difficult to single out a single quotation (or even half a dozen) above so many others.

Answer 3

Viscount St. Albans does infrequently have translated the Bible, he become slightly even a Christian in accordance to the (admittedly ludicrous) standards of the time. The comedian tale on the beginning up of his essay 'On actuality' might have have been given a commoner burned on the stake. Viscount St. Albans could no longer have written Shakespeare. Shakespeare is complete of jokes, and intensely sturdy ones. 1st Baron Beaverbrook has the comparable ability with humour as George W. Bush. The King James version is spectacularly badly written - to boot as being comically misguided. It become effectively unlawful to apply the different translation for over 2 centuries, yet having pronounced that English conversing Christians sought out different translations in a mistaken wish that a sturdy translation could breathe some style of life into Hebrew Scripture. The King James Bible become needed analyzing for many English audio equipment for over 3 hundred years; Shakespeare become in no way needed for all individuals. all of us is conscious 'O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore paintings thou Romeo?', and the story that is going with it. even while somebody can remember a quote from the KJV they might't placed it with the story it comes from. He winketh along with his eyes, he speaketh along with his feet, he teacheth along with his arms.

Answer 4

Repetition, maybe, but mine has to be:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.
Out, out, brief candle'
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.

Answer 5

I agree with SafetyFirst. The older the get the more you do appreciate Shakespeare, the more you realise how close he got to the human soul, or should I call it the human predicament?
There are so many words of his that strike a chord. It is impossible to select one passage and say that it is better than all the rest.

Answer 6

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxslips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throws her enamell'd skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in:
And with the juice of this I'll streak her eyes,
And make her full of hateful fantasies.

And so begins the comic machinations of Puck and Oberon from "A Midsummer Night's Dream".
D

Answer 7

shylocks speech in the merchant of venice...act 3 scene 1

SHYLOCK
To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else,
it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and
hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses,
mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my
bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine
enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath
not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will
resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian,
what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian
wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by
Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you
teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I
will better the instruction.

Answer 8

It's a very short quotation, but the first and last lines have just haunted me since I studied Macbeth at GCSE:

"...his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off;
And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubin, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind. "

Act 1, Scene 7

Answer 9

I also like Shylock's speech. Such a concise and touching call for us to see each person as a fellow human--someone with a common soul.

I like this speech from Merchant as well:

PORTIA
The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea;
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence 'gainst the merchant there.

Answer 10

Land Lord make merry my horse, for tomorrow I ride for the plains of York.

My husband continually used to quote thiss WHY? I have no idea any how the kids could receite this at age 6 as they had heard it so often
Think its Richard III