Richard II Quotes

How long a time lies in one little word!
Four lagging winters and four wanton springs
End in a word: such is the breath of kings.

– William Shakespeare

Must I not serve a long apprenticehood
To foreign passages, and in the end,
Having my freedom, boast of nothing else
But that I was a journeyman to grief?

– William Shakespeare

All places that the eye of heaven visits
Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.
Teach thy necessity to reason thus;
There is no virtue like necessity.

– William Shakespeare

We were not born to sue, but to command.

– William Shakespeare

The language I have learned these forty years,
My native English, now I must forego:
And now my tongue’s use is to me no more
Than an unstringed viol or a harp.

– William Shakespeare

Old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster.

– William Shakespeare

Things sweet to taste prove in digestion sour.

– William Shakespeare

The tongues of dying men
Enforce attention like deep harmony.

– William Shakespeare

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,-
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

– William Shakespeare

The ripest fruit first falls.

– William Shakespeare

The caterpillars of the commonwealth.

– William Shakespeare

Things past redress are now with me past care.

– William Shakespeare

Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,
Let’s choose executors and talk of wills.

– William Shakespeare

More are men’s ends marked than their lives before:
The setting sun, and music at the close,
As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last,
Writ in remembrance more than things long past.

– William Shakespeare

The worst is death, and death will have his day.

– William Shakespeare

Shall we play the wantons with our woes,
And make some pretty match with shedding tears?

– William Shakespeare

Within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antick sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp.

– William Shakespeare

Not all the water in the rough rude sea
Can wash the balm off from an anointed king;
The breath of worldly men cannot depose
The deputy elected by the Lord:
For every man that Bolingbroke hath pressed
To lift shrewd steel against our golden crown,
God for his Richard hath in heavenly pay
A glorious angel: then, if angels fight,
Weak men must fall, for heaven still guards the right.

– William Shakespeare

For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poisoned by their wives: some sleeping killed;
All murdered.

– William Shakespeare

O! who can hold a fire in his hand
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?
Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite
By bare imagination of a feast?
Or wallow naked in December snow
By thinking on fantastic summer’s heat?
O, no! the apprehension of the good
Gives but the greater feeling to the worse.

– William Shakespeare

The purple testament of bleeding war.

– William Shakespeare

Eating the bitter bread of banishment.

– William Shakespeare

Disorder, horror, fear and mutiny
Shall here inhabit, and this land be called
The field of Golgotha and dead men’s skulls.

– William Shakespeare

Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle.

– William Shakespeare

O! call back yesterday, bid time return.

– William Shakespeare

What must the king do now? Must he submit?
The king shall do it: must he be deposed?
The king shall be contented: must he lose
The name of king? o’ God’s name, let it go:
I’ll give my jewels for a set of beads,
My gorgeous palace for a hermitage,
My gay apparel for an almsman’s gown,
My figured goblets for a dish of wood,
My sceptre for a palmer’s walking staff,
My subjects for a pair of carved saints
And my large kingdom for a little grave,
A little little grave, an obscure grave.

– William Shakespeare

I am a stranger here in Gloucestershire:
These high wild hills and rough uneven ways
Draws out our miles, and makes them wearisome.

– William Shakespeare

God save the king! Will no man say amen?
Am I both priest and clerk? well then, amen.

– William Shakespeare

Give me the crown. Here, cousin, seize the crown;
Here cousin,
On this side my hand, and on that side yours.
Now is this golden crown like a deep well
That owes two buckets, filling one another;
The emptier ever dancing in the air,
The other down, unseen and full of water:
That bucket down and full of tears am I,
Drinking my griefs, whilst you mount up on high.

– William Shakespeare