King Lear Quotes

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks. You sulph’rous and thought-executing fires, Vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head.

You do me wrong to take me out o’ th’ grave. Thou art a soul in bliss, but I am bound Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears Do scald like molten lead.

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is To have a thankless child.—Away, away!

When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down And ask of thee forgiveness.

Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again.

Peace, Kent. Come not between the dragon and his wrath. I loved her most and thought to set my rest On her kind nursery

“Oh, let me kiss his hand!” “Let me wipe it first. It smells of mortality.”

I am a man More sinned against than sinning

If it be you that stir these daughters’ hearts Against their father, fool me not so much To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger, And let not women’s weapons, water-drops, Stain my man’s cheeks! No, you unnatural hags, … No, I’ll not weep. I have full cause of weeping, but this heart Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws, Or ere I’ll weep. O fool, I shall go mad!

They told me I was everything: ‘tis a lie, I am no ague-proof.

Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones! Had I your tongues and eyes, I’d use them so That heaven’s vault should crack. She’s gone forever. I know when one is dead and when one lives. She’s dead as earth.—Lend me a looking glass. If that her breath will mist or stain the stone, Why, then she lives.