William Shakespeare Quotes: 20 Sayings To Share On The 400th Anniversary Of The Bard’s Death

William Shakespeare died 400 years ago Saturday, but his words live on. He produced about 38 plays over the course of his 52-year lifetime, and most of them are collected in the “First Folio,” with about 233 original copies of it still in existence, according to the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Shakespeare’s shortest play was “Comedy of Errors,” with about 14,700 words, and his longest play was “Hamlet,” with about 30,557. The words he used most frequently were, of course, “the,” “and,” “I” and “to.” And the playwright created about 1,200 characters, according to Open Source Shakespeare.

All right: enough Shakespearean statistics. Here are 20 quotations of his work to share on the 400th anniversary of his death, collected from Absolute Shakespeare, BuzzFeed and Goodreads.

1. “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” — “Hamlet”

2. “Some are born great, others achieve greatness.” — “Twelfth Night”

3. “I burn, I pine, I perish.” — “The Taming of the Shrew”

4. “Better a witty fool, than a foolish wit.” — “Twelfth Night"

5. “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” — “Julius Caesar”

6. “I would give all my fame for a pot of ale, and safety.” — “Henry V”

7. “And nothing is, but what is not.” — “Macbeth”

8. “Doubt that the stars are fire, doubt that the sun doth move his aides, doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love.” — “Hamlet”

9. “I do love nothing in the world so well as you: is not that strange?” — “Much Ado About Nothing”

10. “The sweetest honey is loathsome in its own deliciousness. And in the taste destroys the appetite. Therefore, love moderately.” — “Romeo and Juliet”

11. “Though this be madness, yet there is method in ’t.” — “Hamlet”

12. “When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.” — “Hamlet”

13. “True hope is swift, and flies with swallow’s wings.” — “Richard III”

14. “So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee.” — “Sonnet 18”

15. “By my soul I swear, there is no power in the tongue of man to alter me.” — “The Merchant of Venice”

16. “We are such stuff as dreams are made on, rounded with a little sleep.” — “The Tempest”

17. “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.” — “As You Like It”

18. “But love is blind, and lovers cannot see.” — “The Merchant of Venice”

19. “Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, it seems to me most strange that men should fear; seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.” — “Julius Caesar”

20. “Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under ’t.” — “Macbeth”