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30 pieces of Shakespearean wisdom

30 pieces of Shakespearean wisdom

30 pieces of Shakespearean wisdom
07 February 2013

Lacking a mentor in your empty life? In need of someone to steer you in the right direction, away from a vortex of self-pity and eating in bed? Well, we have a very legitimate contender for the role.

Okay so he's dead, let's just get that out of the way. But in his lifetime, he managed to weave enough pieces of poster-worthy wisdom that his legacy shows no sign of disappearing. We're talking about William Shakespeare of course. And we have 30 of his best nuggets of advice for you here.

Live by them, yeah?

Click on each image for the full quote

Hamlet

"To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one picked out of ten thousand"


Macbeth

"What's done cannot be undone"


All's Well That Ends Well

"Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none"


Julius Caesar

"Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once."


Twelfth Night

"Better a witty fool, than a foolish wit."


Measure For Measure

"'Tis one thing to be tempted, another thing to fall."


As You Like It

"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool"


Hamlet

"There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy"


Titus Andronicus

"Sweet mercy is nobility's true badge."


Two Gentlemen Of Verona

"Absence from those we love is self from self – a deadly banishment."


Cymbeline

"Society is no comfort to one not sociable."


Troilus and Cressida

"Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise."


Macbeth

“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.”


Henry V

"Men of few words are the best men."


Twelfth Night

"Be not afraid of greatness; some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them"


Romeo & Juliet

"Tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers."


Measure For Measure

"The miserable have no other medicine but only hope."


A Midsummer's Night Dream

"The best in this kind are but shadows, and the worst are no worse if imagination amend them"


The Tempest

"Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows"


Antony and Cleopatra

"In time we hate that which we often fear"


Coriolanus

"Nature teaches beasts to know their friends"


King Lear

"'Jesters do oft prove prophets'"


Othello

"Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit and lost without deserving."


The Comedy Of Errors

"Ill deeds is doubled with an evil word"


Hamlet

"There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so."


Love's Labour's Lost

"Many can brook the weather that love not the wind."


Much Ado About Nothing

"Time goes on crutches till love have all his rites."


The Taming Of The Shrew

"No profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en"


Two Gentlemen Of Verona

"That man that hath a tongue, I say, is no man,

If with his tongue he cannot win a woman."


Henry IV, Part 1

"If all the year were playing holidays,

To sport would be as tedious as to work."