Quotes & Sayings About Shakespeare Sonnets

No decent man ought to read Shakespeare's sonnets because it was like listening at keyholes. — Virginia Woolf

There is hope for a man who has never read Malory or Boswell or Tristam Shandy or Shakespeare's Sonnets: but what can you do with a man who says he "has read" them, meaning he has read them once, and thinks that this settles the matter? — C.S. Lewis

I am a close friend of Robert Loggia. And I just love how, with actors, there's the screen persona. Here is Robert, known for his portrayal of many characters, including gangsters. But in real life, he is elegant and erudite. He sits in the garden reading the sonnets of William Shakespeare. — Luanne Rice

Were kisses all the joys in bed,/One woman would another wed. — William Shakespeare

There is a special department of Hell for students of probability. In this department there are many typewriters and many monkeys. Every time that a monkey walks on a typewriter, it types by chance one of Shakespeare's sonnets. — Bertrand Russell

Rich women, including the queen, made themselves additionally beauteous by bleaching their skin with compounds of borax, sulfur, and lead - all at least mildly toxic, sometimes very much more so - for pale skin was a sign of supreme loveliness. (Which makes the "dark lady" of Shakespeare's sonnets an exotic being in the extreme.) — Bill Bryson

Why people fall in love has been debated since before Shakespeare's sonnets. — Joe Bruno

For all that beauty that doth cover thee
Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,
Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me.
How can I then be elder than thou art? — William Shakespeare

I have always wanted what I have now come to call the voice of personal narrative. That has always been the appealing voice in poetry. It started for me lyrically in Shakespeare's sonnets. — Diane Wakoski

To give yourself away keep yourself still,
And you must live drawn by your own sweet skill. — William Shakespeare

Culture, of course, is an extremely vague word, covering everything from the shaping of hand-axes to corporate mission statements, as well as the finer appreciation of the sonnets of Shakespeare and the paintings of Hokusai; — Nicholas Ostler

Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake,
And die as fast as they see others grow. — William Shakespeare

When I was an undergraduate I had very badly annotated editions of Shakespeare's sonnets, all of which left out the important fact that will has a sexual sense in Shakespeare's sonnets. — Thom Gunn

...he lifted the fat and frightened hawk onto his fist reciting it passages from Hamlet, Macbeth, Richard II, Othello-- 'but tragedy had to be kept out of the voice'-- and all the sonnets he could remember, whistling hymns to it, playing it Gilbert and Sullivan and Italian opera, and deciding, on reflection, that hawks liked Shakespeare best. — Helen Macdonald

Again? Honestly, do you guys think she's hiding in Shakespeare's Sonnets?
- Tina Lewis — R.J. Morse, R.J. Brookes

Shakespeare had all these sonnets where what he said came down to this: Youth is fleeting and you'd better get married and have children and make a copy of the beauty you own because the world owns it too. — Elizabeth Knox

Lorenzo: In such a night stood Dido with a willow in her hand upon the wild sea-banks, and waft her love to come again to Carthage
Jessica: In such a night Medea gathered the enchanted herbs that did renew old Aeson.
Lorenzo: In such a night did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew, and with an unthrift love did run from Venice, as far as Belmont.
Jessica: In such a night did young Lorenzo swear he lov'd her well, stealing her soul with many vows of faith, and ne'er a true one.
Lorenzo: In such a night did pretty Jessica (like a little shrow) slander her love, and he forgave it her.
Jessica: I would out-night you, did nobody come; but hark, I hear the footing of a man. — William Shakespeare

The Sonnets of Shakespeare have the fascination of an autobiography, without its clarity. It is like reading an important document in a cave by the light of matches which keep blowing out. — Gilbert Highet

The woodchopper reads the wisdom of the ages recorded on the paper that holds his dinner, then lights his pipe with it. When we ask for a scrap of paper for the most trivial use, it may have the confessions of Augustine or the sonnets of Shakespeare, and we not observe it. The student kindles his fire, the editor packs his trunk, the sportsman loads his gun, the traveler wraps his dinner, the Irishman papers his shanty, the schoolboy peppers the plastering, the belle pins up her hair, with the printed thoughts of men. — Henry David Thoreau

The public is absolutely fascinated by aging. They don't want to get old. And you can see - read Shakespeare. Read the sonnets. They're all about aging. — Cynthia Kenyon

O friendship, I too will press flowers between the pages of Shakespeare's sonnets! — Virginia Woolf

I strive for what you do find in Shakespeare's work - that there is a definite humanity and a definite character behind the writing in the sonnets, and it's very real because it's so deeply personal. I try to aspire to that in what I do. — Rufus Wainwright

I've stopped acting, but I don't think I've finished using my voice. I could, and probably will, record the whole of Shakespeare's sonnets. They live at the side of my bed and are my constant companions. — Peter O'Toole

They think thee mad? I'll show thou mad, my lord. — Phar West Nagle

Elinor Lipman is to tweets what Shakespeare is to sonnets. — Firoozeh Dumas

Shakespeare wrote his sonnets within a strict discipline, fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, rhyming in three quatrains and a couplet. Were his sonnets dull? Mozart wrote his sonatas within an equally rigid discipline - exposition, development, and recapitulation. Were they dull?. — David Ogilvy

Not even the tallest mountain of raccoon droppings could ever get in the way of my love for you.'
'That might be the most romantic thing you've ever said to me.'
'It's Shakespeare. One of the sonnets. — Gina Damico

I propose that English poetry and biology should be taught as usual, but that at irregular intervals, poetry students should find dogfishes on their desks and biology students should find Shakespeare sonnets on their dissecting boards. I am serious in declaring that a Sarah Lawrence English major who began poking about in a dogfish with a bobby pin would learn more in thirty minutes than a biology major in a whole semester; and that the latter upon reading on her dissecting board That time of year Thou may'st in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold - Bare ruin'd choirs where late the sweet birds sang. might catch fire at the beauty of it. — Walker Percy

Want to talk about Shakespeare's sonnets?" asked Orphu of Io.
Are you shitting me?" The moravecs loved the ancient human colloquial phrases, the more scatological the better.
Yes," said Orphu. "I am most definitely shitting you, my friend. — Dan Simmons

A witty and informative professor posits that more authors do not choose titles borrowed from Shakespeare's sonnets and plays for the reason some people claim not to have partners: "All the good ones are taken." — Thomas C. Foster

It's often assumed that British actors read Shakespeare and sonnets as we're going to bed at night and we're all very familiar with it. — Kate Winslet

Then, were not summer's distillation left
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,
Nor it nor no remembrance what it was.
But flowers distilled, though they with winter meet,
Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet. — William Shakespeare