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"The course of true love never did run smooth."
By Iva-Marie Palmer — Written on Jul 12, 2017
If you’ve read anything about William Shakespeare, you’ve likely come across the fact that he wrote his plays not for highfalutin snobs but for the common masses. In other words, A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream was just the Fast and Furious 12 of its time.
Nowadays, though, we get to the Shakespeare unit in our high school English classes and freak out: The Bard is hard. Or so we often think about anything wherein the language is a slightly different version than what we’re used to. (Imagine what the kids 600 years from now will think when trying to decode our oh-so-scholarly tweets and texts.)
But alas, poor Yoricks (he was the dead clown in Hamlet), the Bard was also kind of romantic (also, randy at times. Actually, SUPER-DUPER randy). Though a teen fake-our-deaths-but-actually-die plot is very very tragic and inadvisable for those looking to spice things up, from Romeo and Juliet to Much Ado About Nothing to The Tempest and on, he penned the kind of lines you can use to make a lover swoon (even if you admit you stole them).
Cutting to the chase, though, Shakespeare gave the people what they wanted. Envy, murder, revenge, crime, treason, infidelity, death, death and more death, and sex aplenty. (It sells, after all.) And a lot on love, from its peaks to its pitfalls. His words on the subject were rarely repetitive and often memorable.
So without further ado, here are the best William Shakespeare quotes on love (and a couple of lusty lines, too):
1.
"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind."
from A Midsummer Night's Dream
2.
"Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?"
from As You Like It
3.
"No sooner met but they looked;
No sooner looked but they loved;
No sooner loved but they sighed;
No sooner signed but they asked one another the reason;
No sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy;
And in these degrees have they made a pair of stairs to marriage..."
from As You Like It
4.
"Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar
but never doubt thy love."
from Hamlet
5.
"The course of true love never did run smooth."
from A Midsummer Night's Dream (Yes, you've heard that one before but it bears repeating.)
6.
"Love is a familiar. Love is a devil. There is no evil angel but Love."
from Love's Labour's Lost
7.
"For where thou art, there is the world itself, and where though art not, desolation."
from Henry VI (Note: the above is definitely to be used by drama kings and queens.)
8.
"The lunatic, the lover, and the poet are of imagination all compact."
from Midsummer Night's Dream (i.e., someone in love is simultaneously a touch crazy and prone to fits of art)
9.
"Speak low, if you speak love."
from Much Ado About Nothing
10.
"Love is a smoke and is made with the fume of sighs."
from Romeo and Juliet
11.
"Love goes by haps; Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps."
from Much Ado About Nothing
12.
"I love you more than words can wield the matter, Dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty."
from King Lear
13.
"Her passions are made of nothing but the finest part of pure love."
from Antony and Cleopatra
14.
"To be wise and love, exceeds man’s might."
from Troilus and Cressida (i.e. love makes fools of us all)
15.
"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."
from Romeo and Juliet
16.
"I humbly do beseech of your pardon,
For too much of loving you."
from Othello
17.
"For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings."
from "Sonnet 29"
18.
"Hear my soul speak:
The very instant that I saw you, did
My heart fly to your service."
from The Tempest (Aside: This is a great way to say, "I will always text back.")
19.
"If thou remember'st not the slightest folly
That ever love did make thee run into,
Thou hast not loved."
from As You Like It (i.e., love makes you do stupid things, as does lust — perhaps stupider!)
Here are some additional William Shakespeare quotes that are pretty lusty. It can't all be noble love and treacherous love and undying love... lust, it must be said, has its place. You know where to put it.
First, among the reasons to rename Hamlet Damnnnnnn-let:
20.
Hamlet: Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
Stew’d in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty,—
from Hamlet (Sadly, Hamlet was jealously talking about his uncle and mother hooking up but an enseamed bed? Seems like it borders on #goals to us.)
21.
"Is this the generation of love? Hot blood, hot thoughts, and hot deeds? Why, they are vipers. Is love a generation of vipers?"
from Troilus and Cressida ("Hot Thoughts and Hot Deeds" is also the title of the Rihanna album we can't wait for.)
22.
"Graze on my lips, and if those hills be dry,
Stray lower, where pleasant fountains lie.
She would hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown by what it fed on."
from Hamlet (Sex begets sex, as the experts say.)
23.
"My cherry lips have often kissed thy stones."
from A Midsummer’s Night Dream (He may have written by hand but when it came to lovemaking, seems like Willie Shakes favored mouth stuff.)
.......
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