William Shakespeare's Birthday: Best Quotes From Plays To Celebrate The Bard

The day that celebrates William Shakespeare’s birthday also marks his death. The legendary bard was supposedly born April 23, 1564, and died on the same day in 1616. Famous for his plays, Shakespeare produced an estimated 37 plays during his lifetime, giving the world 884,647 words that lived on long after his death, according to the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Some of those words, his best remembered and most popular, are listed below to celebrate the bard’s 453rd birthday and mark his death.

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

"Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them." Twelfth Night

"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

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in our philosophy." Hamlet

"The miserable have no other medicine, but hope." Measure for Measure

"I do love nothing in the world so well as you: is not that strange?" Much Ado About Nothing

"The course of true love never did run smooth." A Midsummer Night's Dream

"Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste death but once." Julius Caesar

"This above all: to thine ownself be true. And it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man." Hamlet

"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool." As You Like It

"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." Julius Caesar ​

"If music be the food of love, play on." Twelfth Night

"That thing which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Romeo and Juliet