Shakespeare Villains Quotes & Sayings

I certainly play people on the edge quite a lot. I am interested in what makes people odd and what makes them different. In life I try to play the edges. I have a horror of the herd. There are many, many different sorts of people. A lot of people are fairly uninteresting. I want to play the interesting ones. The villains are always more interesting to portray. Shakespeare knew that. — Jeremy Irons

When rich villains have need of poor ones, poor ones may make what price they will — William Shakespeare

This is the excellent foppery of the world, that,
when we are sick in fortune,
often the surfeit
of our own behavior,
we make guilty of our
disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as
if we were villains by necessity; fools by
heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and
treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards,
liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of
planetary influence; and all that we are evil in,
by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion
of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish
disposition to the charge of a star. — William Shakespeare

Villains, vipers, damn'd without redemption;
Dogs, easily won to fawn on any man;
Snakes in my heart-blood warm'd, that sing my heart;
Three Judases, each one thrice worse than Judas. — William Shakespeare

During war time, when people were injured, I was really frustrated I did not become a doctor. It's painful not being able to save people, witnessing their pain. — Janine Di Giovanni

Hark, villains! I will grind your bones to dust. (Act V, Scene 2, 2503) — William Shakespeare

Milk-livered man,
That bear'st a cheek for blows, a head for wrongs;
Who hast not in thy brows an eye discerning
Thine honor from thy suffering; [that not know'st
Fools do those villains pity who are punished
Ere they have done their mischief. Where's thy drum?
France spreads his banners in our noiseless land,
With plumed helm thy state begins to threat,
Whilst thou, a moral fool, sits still and cries
'Alack, why does he so?'] — William Shakespeare

I think Shakespeare really got it. He was the first one to introduce psychology to villains and give them a real point of view. — Oscar Isaac

O villains, vipers, dogs, easily won to fawn on any man! — William Shakespeare

Shakespeare's villains are fabulous because none of them know that they are villains. Well, sometimes they do. — Ian McKellen

Panties are a privilege, not a right. — Lexi Blake

The enlightened ruler is heedful, and the good general full of caution. — Sun Tzu

You know your mother means to feast with me,
And calls herself Revenge, and thinks me mad:
Hark, villains! I will grind your bones to dust
And with your blood and it I'll make a paste,
And of the paste a coffin I will rear
And make two pasties of your shameful heads,
And bid that strumpet, your unhallow'd dam,
Like to the earth swallow her own increase.
This is the feast that I have bid her to,
And this the banquet she shall surfeit on; (5.2.18) — William Shakespeare

I've always approached spring training as I have something to prove. — Jamie Moyer

Coleridge's description of Iago's actions as "motiveless malignancy" applies in some degree to all the Shakespearian villains. The adjective motiveless means, firstly, that the tangible gains, if any, are clearly not the principal motive, and, secondly, that the motive is not the desire for personal revenge upon another for a personal injury. Iago himself proffers two reasons for wishing to injure Othello and Cassio. He tells Roderigo that, in appointing Cassio to be his lieutenant, Othello has treated him unjustly, in which conversation he talks like the conventional Elizabethan malcontent. In his soliloquies with himself, he refers to his suspicion that both Othello and Cassio have made him a cuckold, and here he talks like the conventional jealous husband who desires revenge. But there are, I believe, insuperable objections to taking these reasons, as some critics have done, at their face value. — W. H. Auden

Elegance is not everything. — Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi

I've always loved dancing. As soon as there is good music, I've got to get up and dance. I was passionate about ballet as a little girl. — Cherie Lunghi

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

Shakespeare villains were extraordinary. Macbeth, Iago, Richard III ... They're so richly layered that a British actor would find it almost impossible to create a two-dimensional villain, if he's explored in his early years or continues to explore his Shakespearean heritage. You can almost not judge them, if they're played really well. — Ben Kingsley

We all want to live forever, but we don't want to suck blood to do it, right? I think people like to have these deep moral questions that don't come up in real life. — Melissa De La Cruz

...a herd of motorcycles. — Robert B. Parker