Sonnet Quotes

• Summer's lease hath all too short a date.

  William Shakespeare

  Summer, Poetry, Too Short

  Sonnet 18

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• All days are nights to see till I see thee, And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.

  William Shakespeare

  I Miss You, Missing You, Dream

  1609 Sonnets, sonnet 43.

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• So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

  William Shakespeare

  Love, Eye, Men

  Sonnet 18

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• If I wrote in a sonnet form, I would be distorting. Or if I had some great new idea for line breaks and I used it in a poem, but it's really not right for that poem, but I wanted it, that would be distorting.

  Sharon Olds

  Ideas, Would Be, Lines

  Interview with Dwight Garner for Salon Magazine, www.english.illinois.edu. July 1, 1996.

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• Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

  William Shakespeare

  Summer, August, Misunderstood

  Sonnet 18

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• I have three phobias which, could I mute them, would make my life as slick as a sonnet, but as dull as ditch water: I hate to go to bed, I hate to get up, and I hate to be alone.

  Tallulah Bankhead

  Life, Hate, Water

  Tallulah Bankhead (1952). “Tallulah: My Autobiography”, p.2, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Each work of art excludes the world, concentrates attention on itself. For the time it is the only thing worth doing -to do just that; be it a sonnet, a statue, a landscape, an outline head of Caesar, or an oration. Presently we return to the sight of another that globes itself into a whole as did the first, for example, a beautiful garden; and nothing seems worth doing in life but laying out a garden.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Beautiful, Art

  7 Copy quote

• I write quite a lot of sonnets, and I think of them almost as prayers: short and memorable, something you can recite.

  Carol Ann Duffy

  Prayer, Memorable, Writing

  "Christmas Carol" by Hephzibah Anderson, www.theguardian.com. December 3, 2005.

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• The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

  William Shakespeare

  Funny, Inspiration, Law

  'Henry VI, Part 2' (1592) act 4, sc. 2, l. [73]

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• I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

  Pablo Neruda

  Love, Pregnancy, I Hate You

  Pablo Neruda, “Sonnet XVII”

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• No longer mourn for me when I am dead Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell Give warning to the world that I am fled From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell.

  William Shakespeare

  Sad, Giving, Sullen

  Sonnet 71

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• I have seen roses damask'd, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks.

  William Shakespeare

  Flower, White, Rose

  William Shakespeare (2001). “As You Like It”, p.209, Classic Books Company

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• The course of true love never did run smooth.

  William Shakespeare

  Love, Life, Summer

  'A Midsummer Night's Dream' (1595-6) act 1, sc. 1, l. 132

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• To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.

  William Shakespeare

  Inspirational, Graduation, Honesty

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 1, sc. 3, l. 58

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• Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

  William Shakespeare

  Inspirational, Life, Success

  'Macbeth' (1606) act 5, sc. 5, l. 16

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• Let me not to the marriage of true minds

  William Shakespeare

  Love, Reading Poetry, Mind

  Sonnet 116

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• I am frequently astonished that it so often results in correct predictions of experimental results.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Predictions, Results

  Nobel Banquet Speech, www.nobelprize.org. December 10, 1969.

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• Being your slave what should I do but tend, Upon the hours, and times of your desire? I have no precious time at all to spend; Nor services to do till you require.

  William Shakespeare

  Love, Heart, Desire

  Sonnet 57

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• Men at some time are masters of their fates. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.

  William Shakespeare

  Life, Stars, Fate

  'Julius Caesar' (1599) act 1, sc. 2, l. 134

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• How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Marriage, Sweet Love, Educational

  Sonnets from the Portuguese no. 43 (1850)

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• My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun

  William Shakespeare

  Love, Eye, Mistress

  Sonnet 130

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• Love is not love
  Which alters when it alteration finds,
  Or bends with the remover to remove.
  O, no! It is an ever-fixed mark,
  That looks on tempests and is never shaken.
  It is the star to every wandering bark,
  Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

  William Shakespeare

  Love, Stars, Taken

  Sonnet 116

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• Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass come.

  William Shakespeare

  Bending, Fool, Lips

  Sonnet 116

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• Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.

  William Shakespeare

  Love, Inspirational, Life

  William Shakespeare (1826). “Plays of William Shakespeare”, p.226

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• I love thee with the passion put to use
  In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
  I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
  With my lost saints,-I love thee with the breath,
  Smiles, tears, of all my life!-and, if God choose,
  I shall but love thee better after death.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Famous Love, Grief, Passion

  Sonnets from the Portuguese no. 43 (1850)

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