William Shakespeare Quotes 2015: 20 Great Sayings About Love On The Bard's Birthday

Thursday would be not only William Shakespeare's 451st birthday, but also the 399th anniversary of his death. The legendary English writer was said to have been born on April 23, 1564, and died that same day in 1616. Over the course of his 52-year life, he wrote nearly 40 plays and 154 sonnets. Today, the Bard is best known for productions like "Romeo and Juliet," "Julius Caesar," "Hamlet" and "Macbeth."

Shakespeare was prolific and eloquent, penning hundreds of famous lines like "To be or not to be?" Compiled from Wikiquote and Goodreads, here are quotes to honor his legacy:

“All things are ready, if our mind be so.”

“Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.”

“The course of true love never did run smooth.”

"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."

“My tongue will tell the anger of my heart, or else my heart concealing it will break.”

“Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.”

“Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.”

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate."

"O, teach me how I should forget to think!"

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”

“Take pains. Be perfect.”

“So wise so young, they say, do never live long.”

"Love's fire heats water, water cools not love."

“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
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom."

“To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.”

“Like madness is the glory of life.”

“Thought is free.”

“It is not, nor it cannot, come to good,
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.”

“Remember me.”

“I feel it gone, yet know not when it left.”