If you’re looking for William Shakespeare quotes about beauty, you’ve come to the right place. Here at Inspiring Lizard we collect thought-provoking quotes from interesting people. And in this article we share a list of the 26 most interesting quotes about beauty by William Shakespeare. Let’s get inspired!
William Shakespeare quotes about beauty
For she had eyes and chose me.
— William Shakespeare, Othello
O my love, my wife!Death, that hath suck’d the honey of thy breathHath had no power yet upon thy beauty.
— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.I have seen roses damask’d, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks;And in some perfumes is there more delightThan in the breath that from my mistress reeks.I love to hear her speak, yet well I knowThat music hath a far more pleasing sound;I grant I never saw a goddess go;My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground: And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.
— William Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s Sonnets
…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.
— William Shakespeare, The Tempest
From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive:They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;They are the books, the arts, the academes, That show, contain and nourish all the world.
— William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
— William Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s Sonnets
O! she doth teach the torches to burn bright It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear; Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear.- Romeo –
— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
The Devil hath powerTo assume a pleasing shape.
— William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Friendship is constant in all other thingsSave in the office and affairs of love.Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues.Let every eye negotiate for itself, And trust no agent; for beauty is a witchAgainst whose charms faith melteth into blood.
— William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
O, then I see Queen Mab hath been with you. . . .She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comesIn shape no bigger than an agate stoneOn the forefinger of an alderman, Drawn with a team of little atomiAthwart men’s noses as they lie asleep.
— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
What is your substance, whereof are you made, That millions of strange shadows on you tend?Since everyone hath every one, one shade, And you, but one, can every shadow lend.Describe Adonis, and the counterfeitIs poorly imitated after you.On Helen’s cheek all art of beauty set, And you in Grecian tires are painted new.Speak of the spring and foison of the year;The one doth shadow of your beauty show, The other as your bounty doth appear, And you in every blessèd shape we know.In all external grace you have some part, But you like none, none you, for constant heart.
— William Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s Sonnets
The Brightness of her cheek would shame those stars as daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven would through the airy region stream so bright that birds would sing, and think it were not night.
— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?
— William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Look on beauty, And you shall see ’tis purchased by the weight;Which therein works a miracle in nature, Making them lightest that wear most of it:So are those crisped snaky golden locksWhich make such wanton gambols with the wind, Upon supposed fairness, often knownTo be the dowry of a second head, The skull that bred them in the sepulchre.Thus ornament is but the guiled shoreTo a most dangerous sea; the beauteous scarfVeiling an Indian beauty; in a word, The seeming truth which cunning times put onTo entrap the wisest.
— William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
Beauty itself doth of itself persuadeThe eyes of men without orator.
— William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece
In the old age black was not counted fair, Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name.But now is black beauty’s successive heir, And beauty slandered with a bastard shame.For since each hand hath put on nature’s pow’r, Fairing the foul with art’s false borrowed face, Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bow’r, But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.Therefore my mistress’ eyes are raven black, Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seemAt such who, not born fair, no beauty lack, Sland’ring creation with a false esteem. Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe, That every tongue says beauty should look so.
— William Shakespeare
What you doStill betters what is done. When you speak, sweet.I’ld have you do it ever: when you sing, I’ld have you buy and sell so, so give alms, Pray so; and, for the ordering your affairs, To sing them too: when you do dance, I wish youA wave o’ the sea, that you might ever doNothing but that; move still, still so, And own no other function: each your doing, So singular in each particular, Crowns what you are doing in the present deed, That all your acts are queens.
— William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale
A right fair mark, fair coz, is soonest hit.
— William Shakespeare
DESDEMONACome, how wouldst thou praise me? IAGO I am about it; but indeed my invention Comes from my pate as birdlime does from frieze; It plucks out brains and all: but my Muse labours, And thus she is deliver’d. If she be fair and wise, fairness and wit, The one’s for use, the other useth it. DESDEMONA Well praised! How if she be black and witty? IAGO If she be black, and thereto have a wit, She’ll find a white that shall her blackness fit. DESDEMONA Worse and worse. EMILIA How if fair and foolish? IAGO She never yet was foolish that was fair; For even her folly help’d her to an heir. DESDEMONA These are old fond paradoxes to make fools laugh i’ the alehouse. What miserable praise hast thou for her that’s foul and foolish? IAGO There’s none so foul and foolish thereunto, But does foul pranks which fair and wise ones do.
— William Shakespeare, Othello
Fie, fie upon her! There’s language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out at every joint and motive of her body.
— William Shakespeare
Golden lads and girls all must, like chimmney-sweepers, come to dust.
— William Shakespeare
turn him into stars and form a constellation in his image. His face will make the heavens so beautiful that the world will fall in love with the night and forget about the garish sun.
— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
When the devout religion of mine eyeMaintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires, And these, who, often drowned, could never die, Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars!One fairer than my love? The all-seeing sunNe’er saw her match since first the world begun.
— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
She will outstrip all praise and make it halt behind her.
— William Shakespeare, The Tempest
The lunatic, the lover, and the poetAre of imagination all compact:One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt:The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, And as imagination bodies forthThe forms of things unknown, the poet’s penTurns them to shapes and gives to airy nothingA local habitation and a name.
— William Shakespeare
Be not self-willed, for thou art much too fairTo be death’s conquest and make worms thine heir.
— William Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s Sonnets
His beauty shall in these black lines be seen, and they shall live, and he in them still green.
— William Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s Sonnets
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