King Lear Quotes

“And worse I may be yet: the worst is not
So long as we can say 'This is the worst.”
― William Shakespeare, King Lear

“A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a
base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited,
hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a
lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson,
glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue;
one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a
bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but
the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar,
and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom I
will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest
the least syllable of thy addition.”
― William Shakespeare, King Lear

“Sir, I love you more than words can wield the matter; dearer than eye-sight, space, and liberty, beyond waht can be valued, rich or rare; no less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honor; as much as child e'er loved, or father found; a love that makes breath poor, and speech unable; beyond all manner of so much I love you.”
― William Shakespeare

“Thou whoreson zed! Thou unnecessary letter! My lord, if you will give me leave, I will tread this unbolted villain into mortar, and daub the wall of a jakes with him. *all cheer for Shakespearean insults*”
― William Shakespeare

“Pour on, I will endure.”
― William Shakespeare

“Fare thee well, king: sith thus thou wilt appear,
Freedom lives hence, and banishment is here.”
― William Shakespeare, King Lear

“To call an artist morbid because he deals with morbidity as his subject-matter is as silly as if one called Shakespeare mad because he wrote ‘King Lear.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism

“Hear, nature, hear; dear goddess, hear!
Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend
To make this creature fruitful!
Into her womb convey sterility!
Dry up in her the organs of increase;
And from her derogate body never spring
A babe to honour her! If she must teem,
Create her child of spleen; that it may live,
And be a thwart disnatured torment to her!
Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth;
With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks;
Turn all her mother's pains and benefits
To laughter and contempt; that she may feel
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child! Away, away!”
― William Shakespeare

“I have often noticed that we are inclined to endow our friends with the stability of type that literary characters acquire in the reader's mind. No matter how many times we reopen 'King Lear,' never shall we find the good king banging his tankard in high revelry, all woes forgotten, at a jolly reunion with all three daughters and their lapdogs. Never will Emma rally, revived by the sympathetic salts in Flaubert's father's timely tear. Whatever evolution this or that popular character has gone through between the book covers, his fate is fixed in our minds, and, similarly, we expect our friends to follow this or that logical and conventional pattern we have fixed for them.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“The quality of nothing hath not such need to hide itself”
― William Shakespeare

“I yet beseech your majesty,--
If for I want that glib and oily art,
To speak and purpose not; since what I well intend,
I'll do't before I speak,--that you make known
It is no vicious blot, murder, or foulness,
No unchaste action, or dishonour'd step,
That hath deprived me of your grace and favour;
But even for want of that for which I am richer,
A still-soliciting eye, and such a tongue
As I am glad I have not, though not to have it
Hath lost me in your liking.”
― William Shakespeare

“Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters:
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness;
I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children,
You owe me no subscription: then let fall
Your horrible pleasure: here I stand, your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man:
But yet I call you servile ministers,
That have with two pernicious daughters join'd
Your high engender'd battles 'gainst a head
So old and white as this. O! O! 'tis foul!”
― William Shakespeare

“The leafless trees, with their black branches stretched hysterically in every direction, looked to him like illustrations of a central nervous system racked by disease: studies of human suffering anatomized against the winter sky.”
― Edward St. Aubyn, Dunbar

“The sun goes down. The trees bend,
they straighten up. They bend.
 
At eight the youngest daughter comes.
She holds his hand.
She says, Did they feed you?
He says no.
He says, Get me out of here.
He wants so much to say please,
but won’t.
 
After a pause, she says—
he hears her say—
I love you like salt.”
― Margaret Atwood, Morning In The Burned House: Poems

“The bow is bent and drawn; make from the shaft.
Kent. Let it fall rather, though the fork invade
The region of my heart! Be Kent unmannerly
When Lear is mad. What wouldst thou do, old man?
Think'st thou that duty shall have dread to speak
When power to flattery bows? To plainness honour's bound
When majesty falls to folly. Reverse thy doom;
And in thy best consideration check
This hideous rashness. Answer my life my judgment,
Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least,
Nor are those empty-hearted whose low sound
Reverbs no hollowness.”
― William Shakespeare, King Lear

“Yet I am doubtful, for I am mainly ignorant. What place this is, and all the skill I have
Remembers not these garments. Nor I know not
Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me,
For as I am a man, I think this lady
To be my child Cordelia.”
― William Shakespeare

“Put on what weary negligence you please,
You and your fellows; I'll have it come to question:
If he dislike it, let him to our sister,
Whose mind and mine, I know, in that are one,
Not to be over-ruled. Idle old man,
That still would manage those authorities
That he hath given away! Now, by my life,
Old fools are babes again; and must be used
With cheques as flatteries,--when they are seen abused.
Remember what I tell you.”
― William Shakespeare

“They'll have me whipped for speaking true, thou'lt have me whipped for lying, and sometimes I am whipped for holding my peace.”
― William Shakespeare, King Lear

“I gave you all!" screeched Lear, waving a palsied claw at Regan.
"And you took your bloody time giving it, too, you senile old fuck," said Regan.”
― Christopher Moore, Fool

“With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?”
― Shakespeare, William

“But the strength that remains, which is principally destructive, is the film's dialectical relationship to most of the other movies that we see, its capacity to make their most time-honored conventions seem tedious, shopworn, and unnecessary. This originality often seems to be driven by hatred and anger, emotions that are undervalued in more cowardly periods such as the present...”
― Jonathan Rosenbaum, Placing Movies: The Practice of Film Criticism

“…every King must have a fool or risk becoming the fool himself.”
― W.H. Mitchell, The Dragons of Andromeda

“O Goneril! You are not worth the dust the rude wind blows in your face. I fear your disposition.”
― William Shakespeare, King Lear

“He that has a house to put 's head in has a good
head-piece.
The codpiece that will house
Before the head has any,
The head and he shall louse:
So beggars marry many.”
― William Shakespeare, King Lear

“...Atina gibi, Floransa gibi küçük bir site devletinin ileri gelen bir vatandaşının kendini önemli bir kişi gibi hissetmesi o kadar zor olmazdı. O zamanlarda dünya evrenin merkezi, insanoğlu da yaratılışın amacıydı; o çağda yaşayan insan ise kendi sitesinin en mükemmel insanları barındırdığını, kendisinin ise, kendi sitesinin en mükemmel insanları arasında olduğunu düşünebiliyordu. Bu durumda Aeskilos ya da Dante, kendi sevinç ya da üzüntülerini ciddiye alabilirdi. Aeskilos da, Dante de, tek tek insanların duygularının önem taşıdığı ve trajik olayların ölümsüz şiirle yüceltilmeye layık olduğu inancını besleyebilirdi. Halbuki modern insan, bahtsızlığa uğradığı zaman, kendini istatistik toplamın bir parçası gibi hisseder; geçmiş ve gelecek onun önünde, saçma ve önemsiz yenilgilerin meydana getirdiği ürkütücü alaylar halinde uzar. İnsanoğlunun kendi de, sonsuz sessizlikler arasında kısa bir süre için bağırıp çağıran, yaygaralar koparan az çok saçma, çalımlı bir hayvan gibi görünür. Kral Lear, "Gerekli ihtiyaçları sağlanmamış insan, zavallı, çıplak, oklanmış bir hayvandan farksızdır," der ve bu fikir alışılmamış bir şey olduğundan onu deliliğe sürükler. Ne var ki, bu fikir modern insan için alışılmış bir şeydir ve onu sadece saçmalığa sürükler...”
― Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays

“In King Lear, there is a man who is such a minor character that Shakespeare has not given him even a name: he is merely “First Servant.” All the characters around him – Regan, Cornwall, and Edmund – have fine long-term plans. They think they know how the story is going to end, and they are quite wrong. The servant has no such delusions. He has no notion of how the play is going to go. But he understands the present scene. He sees an abomination (the blinding of old Gloucester) taking place. He will not stand it.

His sword is out and pointed at his master’s breast in a moment: then Regan stabs him dead from behind. That is his whole part: eight lines all told. But if it were real life and not a play, that is the part it would be best to have acted.”
― C.S. Lewis

“How? Nothing shall come of nothing! Speak again.”
― William Shakespeare, King Lear

“Kent, on thy life, no more.”
― William Shakespeare, King Lear

“Frequent suggestions were made during the course of the trial that the motives of the donor and the donees alike, in carrying out this transaction, were to escape death duties. I feel constrained to dispose once and for all of these suggestions by the short answer that the existence or otherwise of such motives is irrelevant, excep as evidence for or against the bona fides of the transactions. There is the highest authority for the proposition that, if a man can lawfully so order his affairs that the payment of revenue duties of any kind is reduced or avoided altogether, there is no legal objection to his doing so. Whatever may be thought as the the morality of such transactions in these times from the point of view of patriotism and public spirit, there is no ground for ignoring their legal effect, unless such transactions be proved to be amere sham, such as those falling within the words 'not bona fide' in the act of 1894, or the phrase 'artificial transaction' in the Finance Acts of more recent years.

Attorney General vs. Goneril Albany in re the estate of King Lear, MORE LEGAL FICTIONS”
― A. Laurence Polak

“If I had written King Lear, I would be plagued by remorse for the rest of my life. For the sheer greatness of this work grossly magnifies its defects, its monstrous defects, the tiniest things that stand between certain scenes andbtheir possible perfection. It’s not the sun marred by spots; it’s a broken Greek statue. All that has ever been done is ridden with errors, faulty perspectives, ignorance, signs of bad taste, shortcomings and oversights. To write a masterpiece large enough to be great and perfect enough to be sublime is a task no one has had the fortune or divine capacity to accomplish. Whatever can’t be done in a single burst suffers from the unevenness of our spirit.
This thought causes my imagination to be overwhelmed by regret, by a painful certainty that I’ll never be able to do anything good and useful for Beauty. The only method for achieving Perfection is to be God. Our greatest effort takes time; the time it takes passes through various stages of our soul, and each stage of the soul, being unlike any other, taints the character of the work with its own personality. All we can be certain of when we write is that we write badly; the only great and perfect works are the ones we never dream of realizing.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet: The Complete Edition