Shakespeare Cleopatra Quotes & Sayings

Cleopatra: Give me to drink Mandragora.
Charmian: Why, madam?
Cleopatra: That I might sleep out this great gap of time my Antony is away. — William Shakespeare

Being an artist:
And this susceptibility of theirs is doubly unfortunate , I thought, returning again to my original enquiry into what state of mind is propitious for creative work, because the mind of an artist, in order to achieve to the prodigious effort of freeing whole and entire the work that is in him, must be incandescent, like Shakespeare's mind, I conjectured, looking at the book which lay open at Antony and Cleopatra. There must be no obstacle in it, no foreign matter unconsumed. — Virginia Woolf

Here was a woman about the year 1800 writing without hate, without bitterness, without fear, without protest, without preaching. That was how Shakespeare wrote, I thought, looking at Antony and Cleopatra; and when people compare Shakespeare and Jane Austen, they may mean that the minds of both had consumed all impediments; and for that reason we do not know Jane Austen and we do not know Shakespeare, and for that reason Jane Austen pervades every word that she wrote, and so does Shakespeare. — Virginia Woolf

How DARE you and the rest of your barbarians set fire to my library? Play conqueror all you want, Mighty Caesar! Rape, murder, pillage thousands, even millions of human beings! But neither you nor any other barbarian has the right to destroy one human thought! — William Shakespeare

Even those who know better, such as the King, nurse strange ideas about me as a prophet. They do not understand that I am given to see only those matters that roil the heavens. They expect me to know everything. — Geraldine Brooks

CLEOPATRA: My salad days,
When I was green in judgment: cold in blood,
To say as I said then! But, come, away;
Get me ink and paper:
He shall have every day a several greeting,
Or I'll unpeople Egypt. — William Shakespeare

Her passions are made of nothing but the finest part of pure love; we cannot call her winds and waters, sighs and tears; they are greater storms and tempests than almanacs can report ... — William Shakespeare

Cleopatra: Oh, Charmian, Where think'st thou he is now? Stands he or sits he?
Or does he walk? Or is he on his horse?
O happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony!
Do bravely, horse, for wott'st thou whom thou mov'st?
The demi-Atlas of this earth, the arm
And burgonet of men. He's speaking now,
Or murmuring "Where's my serpent of old Nile?"
For so he calls me. Now I feed myself
With most delicious poison. Think on me,
That am with Phoebus' amorous pinches black
And wrinkled deep in time. Broad-fronted Caesar,
When thou wast here above the ground, I was
A morsel for a monarch. And great Pompey
Would stand and make his eyes grow in my brow.
There would he anchor his aspect, and die
With looking on his life. — William Shakespeare

Antony shall be brought drunken forth, and I shall see some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness
I' th' posture of a whore. — William Shakespeare

The April's in her eyes: it is love's Spring,
And these the showers to bring it on.. — William Shakespeare

CLEOPATRA: If it be love indeed, tell me how much. ANTONY: There's beggary in the love that can be reckoned. CLEOPATRA: I'll set a bourne how far to be belov'd. ANTONY: Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new earth. — William Shakespeare

Gender reassignment is an exorcism of the mother — Germaine Greer

BRCA-1, a gene that strongly predisposes humans to breast and ovarian cancer. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

I often derive a peculiar satisfaction in conversing with the ancient and modern dead, - who yet live and speak excellently in their works. My neighbors think me often alone, - and yet at such times I am in company with more than five hundred mutes - each of whom, at my pleasure, communicates his ideas to me by dumb signs - quite as intelligently as any person living can do by uttering of words. — Laurence Sterne

The way he said it, with a twinkle in his already too-twinkly blue eyes, made Aimee feel twinkly, too. — Ophelia London

I never really thought about how when I look at the moon, it's the same moon as Shakespeare and Marie Antoinette and George Washington and Cleopatra looked at. — Susan Beth Pfeffer

MESSENGER
I didn't say free, madam. No, I didn't say that. He's bound to Octavia.

CLEOPATRA
For what favor?

MESSENGER
For the favor of sleeping in her bed.

CLEOPATRA
I am pale, Charmian.

MESSENGER
He's married to Octavia, madam.

CLEOPATRA
May you die of the worst disease! — William Shakespeare

I think that whenever a Jew has any kind of notoriety, good or bad, the Jews find it to be good. — Sarah Silverman

If it be love indeed, tell me how much.
There's beggary in the love that can be reckon'd.
I'll set a bourn how far to be belov'd.
Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new earth.
Antony and Cleopatra - Act 1, Scene 1 — William Shakespeare

Cleopatra: Whoever is born on a day I forget to send a message to Antony will die a beggar. Bring ink and paper, Charmian. Welcome, my good Alexas. Charmian, did I ever love Caesar as much as this?
Charmian:
Oh, that splendid Caesar!
Cleopatra:
May you choke on any other sentiments like that! Say, "That splendid Antony."
Charmian:
The courageous Caesar!
Cleopatra:
By Isis, I'll give you bloody teeth if you ever compare Caesar with Antony, my best man among men. — William Shakespeare

We can not blame Shakespeare for making use of cutthroats and villains in developing his plots, but we might have been spared the jokes which the jailors of Posthumus perpetrate when they come to lead him to the scaffold, and the ludicrous English of the clown who supplies Cleopatra with an asp. — William Shakespeare

The matter of the breath of the poor weighs upon Shakespeare and his characters. Cleopatra shudders at the thought that "mechanic slaves, With greasy aprons, rules and hammers, shall Uplift us to the view; in their thick breaths Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded, And forced to drink their vapor." (Antony and Cleopatra, Act 5, Sc. 2.) — William Shakespeare

What I don't like so much is to give explanations about people's behaviour ... I'm not interested in making conclusions. I would never think about myself or anyone else, 'Well, this happened, this happened, this happened, so this must be the result.' It doesn't work like that with me. — Claire Denis

How shall I abide
In this dull world, which in thy absence is
No better than a sty? — William Shakespeare

If you find him sad, say I am dancing. If in mirth, report that I am sudden sick. — William Shakespeare

It were for me
To throw my sceptre at the injurious gods;
To tell them that this world did equal theirs
Till they had stolen our jewel. — William Shakespeare

It may take a decade or two before the extent of Shakespeare's collaboration passes from the graduate seminar to the undergraduate lecture, and finally to popular biography, by which time it will be one of those things about Shakespeare that we thought we knew all along. Right now, though, for those who teach the plays and write about his life, it hasn't been easy abandoning old habits of mind. I know that I am not alone in struggling to come to terms with how profoundly it alters one's sense of how Shakespeare wrote, especially toward the end of his career when he coauthored half of his last ten plays. For intermixed with five that he wrote alone, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, and The Tempest, are Timon of Athens (written with Thomas Middleton), Pericles (written with George Wilkins), and Henry the Eighth, the lost Cardenio, and The Two Noble Kinsmen (all written with John Fletcher). — James Shapiro

It is no surprise that the only woman in antiquity who could be the subject of a full-length biography is Cleopatra. Yet, unlike Alexander, whom she rivals as the theme of romance and legend, Cleopatra is known to us through overwhelmingly hostile sources. The reward of the 'good' woman in Rome was likely to be praise in stereotyped phrases; in Athens she won oblivion. — Sarah B. Pomeroy

Mark had a smile that could break your heart. It seemed to take up his whole face and brighten his eyes, firing the blue and gold from inside. — Cassandra Clare