“What is literature but the expression of moods by the vehicle of symbol and incident?”

“All men live in sufferingI know as few can know,Whether they take the upper roadOr stay content on the low.”

“Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enameling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come.”

“All art is in the last analysis an endeavor to condense as out of the flying vapor of the world an image of human perfection, and for its own and not for the art's sake.”

“The women that I picked spoke sweet and lowAnd yet gave tongue. "Hound voices" were they all.”

“Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye Than twenty of their swords: look thou but sweet, And I am proof against their enmity.”

“Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?”

“For where is any author in the world Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye?”

“...and then, in dreaming, / The clouds methought would open and show riches / Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked / I cried to dream again.”

“O, then I see Queen Mab hath been with you. . . . She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes In shape no bigger than an agate stone On the forefinger of an alderman, Drawn with a team of little atomi Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep.”

“For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.”

“Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,So do our minutes hasten to their end;Each changing place with that which goes before,In sequent toil all forwards do contend.”

“We are time's subjects, and time bids be gone.”

“The seasons alter: hoary-headed frostsFall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose.”

“What, no more ceremony? See, my women! Against the blown rose may they stop their nose That kneel'd unto the buds.”

“You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will more willingly part withal: except my life, except my life, except my life.”

“And makes me poor indeed.”

“Thou know'st 'tis common; all that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity.”

“Unsubstantial Death is amorous.”

“Time, that takes survey of all the world,Must have a stop.”

“Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.”

“Present fears are less than horrible imaginings.”

“The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.”

“Every fair from fair sometime declines”

“Summer's lease hath all too short a date.”

“'Tis brief, my lord...as woman's love.”