William Shakespeare Eye Quotations

Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong.

Let every eye negotiate for itself and trust no agent.

But O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes.

O hell! to choose love with another's eye.

I do I know not what, and fear to find Mine eye too great a flatterer for my mind. Fate, show thy force. Ourselves we do not owe. What is decreed must be; and be this so.

And thence from Athens turn away our eyes To seek new friends and stranger companies.

And sleep, that sometime shuts up sorrow's eye, Steal me awhile from mine own company.

Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers: the sleeping and the dead are but as pictures: ‘tis the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil

Love does not see with the eyes, but with the soul.

For she had eyes and chose me.

Love's stories written in love's richest books. To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes.

Men's eyes were made to look, let them gaze, I will budge for no man's pleasure.

O, here Will I set up my everlasting rest, And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last! Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss A dateless bargain to engrossing death!

A good leg will fall, a straight back will stoop, a black beard will turn white, a curled pate will grow bald, a fair face will wither, a full eye will wax hollow. But a good heart...is the sun and moon...for it shines bright and never changes, but keeps its course truly. Henry V, Act V, Scene 2

Care keeps his watch in every old man’s eye, And where care lodges, sleep will never lie.

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.

No, Cassius; for the eye sees not itself, But by reflection, by some other things.

Had I no eyes but ears, my ears would love. That inward beauty and invisible; Or were I deaf, thy outward parts would move each part in me that were but sensible: Though neither eyes nor ears, to hear nor see, yet should I be in love by touching thee. 'Say, that the sense of feeling were bereft me, and that I could not see, nor hear, nor touch, and nothing but the very smell were left me, yet would my love to thee be still as much; for from the stillitory of thy face excelling comes breath perfum'd that breedeth love by smelling.

To beguile the time, look like the time. Bear welcome in your eye, your hand, your tongue.

Wherefore was I to this keen mockery born? When at your hands did I deserve this scorn? Is't not enough, is't not enough, young man, That I did never, no, nor never can, Deserve a sweet look from Demetrius' eye, But you must flout my insufficiency?

one pain is cured by another. catch some new infection in your eye and the poison of the old one would die.

I have no way and therefore want no eyes I stumbled when I saw. Full oft 'tis seen our means secure us, and our mere defects prove our commodities.

But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel, Making a famine where abundance lies, Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.

Love is a smoke rais'd with the fume of sighs; being purg'd, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes; being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears; what is it else? A madness most discreet, a choking gall, and a preserving sweet.

And then he drew a dial from his poke, And looking with lack-lustre eye, Says very wisely, 'It is ten o'clock: Thus we may see', Quoth he, 'how the world wags: 'Tis but an hour ago since it was nine, And after one hour more 'twill be eleven; And so from hour to hour we ripe and ripe, And then from hour to hour we rot and rot.

Seems," madam? Nay, it is; I know not "seems." 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, Nor customary suits of solemn black, Nor windy suspiration of forced breath, No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage, Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief, That can denote me truly: these indeed seem, For they are actions that a man might play: But I have that within which passeth show; These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

The eye sees all, but the mind shows us what we want to see.

Then must you speak Of one that loved not wisely but too well, Of one not easily jealous but, being wrought, Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand, Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes, Albeit unused to the melting mood, Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees Their medicinable gum. Set you down this, And say besides that in Aleppo once, Where a malignant and a turbaned Turk Beat a Venetian and traduced the state, I took by th' throat the circumcised dog And smote him thus.

What hands are here? ha! they pluck out mine eyes! Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red.” “My hands are of your colour; but I shame to wear a heart so white. A little water clears us of this deed: How easy it is then! Your constancy hath left you unattended.

Tam: What begg’st thou then? fond woman, let me go. Lav: ’Tis present death I beg; and one thing more That womanhood denies my tongue to tell. O! keep me from their worse than killing lust, And tumble me into some loathsome pit, Where never man’s eye may behold my body: Do this, and be a charitable murderer. Tam: So should I rob my sweet sons of their fee: No, let them satisfy their lust on thee. Dem: Away! for thou hast stay’d us here too long. Lav: No grace! no womanhood! Ah, beastly creature, The blot and enemy to our general name. Confusion fall—

Stars hide your fires; let not light see my black and deep desires: The eyes wink at the hand; yet let that be which the eye fears, when it is done, to see

Look to her, Moor, if thou has eyes to see. She has deceived her father, and may thee.

Friendship is constant in all other things Save 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 witch Against whose charms faith melteth into blood.

What, all so soon asleep! I wish mine eyes Would, with themselves, shut up my thoughts...

I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thy eyes—and moreover, I will go with thee to thy uncle’s.

And, looking on it with lack-lustre eye, Says very wisely, "It is ten o'clock: Thus we may see," quoth he, "how the world wags."

Have you not a moist eye, a dry hand, a yellow cheek, a white beard, a decreasing leg, an increasing belly? Is not your voice broken, your wind short, your chin double, your wit single, and every part about you blasted with antiquity?

It is thyself, mine own self's better part; Mine eye's clear eye, my dear heart's dearer heart; My food, my fortune, and my sweet hope's aim, My sole earth's heaven, and my heaven's claim.

Free from gross passion or of mirth of anger constant spirit, not swerving with the blood, garnish'd and deck'd in modest compliment, not working with the eye without the ear, and but in purged judgement trusting neither? Such and so finely bolted didst thou seem.

In peace there's nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility: But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger; Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage; Then lend the eye a terrible aspect; . . . . Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide, Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun

Brutus, I do observe you now of late: I have not from your eyes that gentleness And show of love as I was wont to have: You bear too stubborn and too strange a hand Over your friend that loves you. Poor Brutus, with himself at war, Forgets the shows of love to other men.

If I could write the beauty of your eyes And in fresh numbers number all your graces, The age to come would say, 'This poet lies; Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.'

Love adds a precious seeing to the eye.

What ugly sights of death within mine eyes!

When Death doth close his tender dying eyes.

The sudden hand of Death close up mine eye!

All places that the eye of heaven visits Are to a wise man ports and happy havens. Teach thy necessity to reason thus; There is no virtue like necessity.

He was too good to be Where ill men were, and was the best of all Amongst the rar'st of good ones- sitting sadly Hearing us praise our loves of Italy For beauty that made barren the swell'd boast Of him that best could speak; for feature, laming The shrine of Venus or straight-pight Minerva, Postures beyond brief nature; for condition, A shop of all the qualities that man Loves woman for; besides that hook of wiving, Fairness which strikes the eye- CYMBELINE.

But pearls are fair; and the old saying is: Black men are pearls in beauteous ladies' eyes.

Now stand you on the top of happy hours, And many maiden gardens yet unset, With virtuous wish would bear you living flowers, Much liker than your painted counterfeit: So should the lines of life that life repair Which this, Time's pencil, or my pupil pen Neither in inward worth nor outward fair Can make you live your self in eyes of men.

you saw her fair, none else being by, Herself pois'd with herself in either eye; But in that crystal scales let there be weigh'd Your lady's love against some other maid That I will show you shining at this feast, And she shall scant show well that now seems best.

Mine eyes Were not in fault, for she was beautiful; Mine ears, that heard her flattery; nor my heart, That thought her like her seeming. It had been vicious To have mistrusted her.

Being daily swallowed by men's eyes, They surfeited with honey and began To loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof a little More than a little is by much too much. So, when he had occasion to be seen, He was but as the cuckoo is in June. Heard, not regarded.

A goodly portly man, i' faith, and a corpulent; of a cheerful look, a pleasing eye, and a most noble carriage; and, as I think, his age some fifty, or, by'r Lady, inclining to threescore; and now I remember me, his name is Falstaff.

They are fairies; he that speaks to them shall die. I'll wink and couch; no man their works must eye.

Therefore, to be possess'd with double pomp, To guard a title that was rich before, To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfume on the violet, To smooth the ice, or add another hue Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.

Set honour in one eye and death i' the other, And I will look on both indifferently.

When most I wink, then do my eyes best see

What power is it which mounts my love so high, that makes me see, and cannot feed mine eye

A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears: see how yond justice rails upon yon simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: change places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?

There's nothing situate under heaven's eye But hath his bond in earth, in sea, in sky. The beasts, the fishes, and the winged fowls Are their males' subjects and at their controls. Man, more divine, the master of all these, Lord of the wide world and wild wat'ry seas, Indu'd with intellectual sense and souls, Of more pre-eminence than fish and fowls, Are masters to their females, and their lords; Then let your will attend on their accords.

Full many a glorious morn I have seen Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye, Kissing with golden face the meadows green, Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy...

Oh! that you could turn your eyes towards the napes of your necks, and make but an interior survey of your good selves.

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

Be cheerful; wipe thine eyes: Some falls are means the happier to arise

I'll privily away; I love the people, But do not like to stage me to their eyes; Though it do well, I do not relish well Their loud applause and aves vehement, Nor do I think the man of safe discretion That does not affect it.

If it be aught toward the general good, Set honor in one eye and death i' th' other, And I will look on both indifferently; For let the gods so speed me as I love The name of honor more than I fear death.

No matter where; of comfort no man speak: Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs; Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth

In such business Action is eloquence, and the eyes of th’ ignorant More learned than the ears.

The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, doth glance from heaven to Earth, from Earth to heaven; and as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the poet's pen turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name; such tricks hath strong imagination.

it is my lady! *sighs* o, it is my love! o, that she knew she were! she speaks, yet she sais nothing. what of that? her eye discourses; i will answer it. i am too bold, 'tis not to me she speaks; two of the fairest stars in all the heaven, having some business, do entreat her eyes to twinkle in their spheres till they return.

Well, in that hit you miss. She'll not be hit With Cupid's arrow. She hath Dian's wit, And, in strong proff of chastity well armed, From Love's weak childish bow she lives uncharmed. She will not stay the siege of loving terms, Nor bide th' encounter of assailing eyes, Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold. O, she is rich in beauty; only poor That, when she dies, with dies her store. Act 1,Scene 1, lines 180-197

Is it thy will, thy image should keep open My heavy eyelids to the weary night? Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken, While shadows like to thee do mock my sight? Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee So far from home into my deeds to pry, To find out shames and idle hours in me, The scope and tenor of thy jealousy? O, no! thy love, though much, is not so great: It is my love that keeps mine eye awake: Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat, To play the watchman ever for thy sake: For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere, From me far off, with others all too near.

Your face, my thane, is as a book where men May read strange matters. To beguile the time, Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye, Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent under't.

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me; For now hath time made me his numbering clock: My thoughts are minutes; and with sighs they jar Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch, Whereto my finger, like a dial's point, Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears. Now sir, the sound that tells what hour it is Are clamorous goans, which strike upon my heart, Which is the bell: so sighs and tears and groans Show minutes, times, and hours.

Out of my sight! Thou dost infect mine eyes.

Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing of her gallèd eyes, She married. O, most wicked speed, to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!

I’ll look to like, if looking liking move; But no more deep will I endart mine eye than your consent gives strength to make it fly.

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.

Last scene of all that ends this strange, eventful history, is second childishness and mere oblivion. I am sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Hath Romeo slain himself? Say thou but ay, And that bare vowel ay shall poison more Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice. I am not I,if there be such an ay, Or those eyes shut,that make thee answer ay: If he be slain say ay,or if not,no: Brief sounds,determine of my weal or woe.

Therefore, to be possessed with double pomp,To guard a title that was rich before,To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,To throw a perfume on the violet,To smooth the ice, or add another hueUnto the rainbow, or with taper lightTo seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.

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.

Come, seeling night, Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day, And with thy bloody and invisible hand Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond Which keeps me pale. Light thickens, and the crow Makes wing to th' rooky wood. Good things of day begin to droop and drowse, While night's black agents to their prey do rouse.

Promising is the very air o' th' time; it opens the eyes of expectation. Performance is ever duller for his act; and, but in the plainer and simpler kind of people, the deed of saying is quite out of use. To promise is most courtly and fashionable; performance is a kind of will or testament which argues a great sickness in his judgment that makes it.

Shakespeare scholars just sigh and consign the book to the great pantheon of revelations .. I am accustomed to fanatics who get a funny look in the eye when they come to speak to me how about the Earl of Oxford or Marlowe really wrote the plays. She spoke rationally, and it's an intelligently readable book, but it floats way above the facts, as I told her.

Tell me where is fancy bred, Or in the heart, or in the head? How begot, how nourished? Reply, reply. It is engend'red in the eyes, With gazing fed, and fancy dies In the cradle where it lies.

What many men desire--that 'many' may be meant By the fool multitude that choose by show, Not learning more than the fond eye doth teach, Which pries not to th' interior, but like the martlet Builds in the weather on the outward wall, Even in the force and road of casualty.

Supposition all our lives shall be stuck full of eyes; For treason is but trusted like the fox, Who, ne'er so tame, so cherished and locked up, Will have a wild trick of his ancestors.

Who has a book of all that monarchs do, He's more secure to keep it shut than shown; For vice repeated is like the wand'ring wind, Blows dust in others' eye, to spread itself; And yet the end of all is bought thus dear, The breath is gone, and the sore eyes see clear To stop the air would hurt them.

Promising is the very air o' the time; it opens the eyes of expectation.

It is a basilisk unto mine eye, Kills me to look on't.

My will enkindled by mine eyes and ears, Two traded pilots 'twixt the dangerous shores Of will and judgment.

A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind.

When Fortune means to men most good, She looks upon them with a threatening eye.

Mine eyes smell onions: I shall weep anon.

Mine eyes are full of tears, my heart of grief.

Our very eyes Are sometimes, like our judgments, blind.

Get thee glass eyes, and like a scurvy politician, seem to see the things thou dost not.