Quotes about Shakespeare

• He is of no age — nor, I may add, of any religion, or party, or profession. The body and substance of his works came out of the unfathomable depths of his own oceanic mind.
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Specimens of the Table Talk of the Late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Vol. II (1835), p. 301.
• But my God, how beautiful Shakespeare is, who else is as mysterious as he is; his language and method are like a brush trembling with excitement and ecstasy. But one must learn to read, just as one must learn to see and learn to live.
• Vincent van Gogh, in a letter to Theo van Gogh (July 1880) as translated by Mrs. Johanna van Gogh-Bonger
• He was not of an age, but for all time!
• Ben Jonson, To the Memory of my Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare (1623)
• Shakespeare has united the powers of exciting laughter and sorrow not only in one mind but in one composition. Almost all his plays are divided between serious and Ludicrous characters and they sometimes produce sorrow and sometimes laughter.
  That this is a practice contrary to the rules of criticism will be readily allowed; but there is always an appeal open from criticism to nature.
• Samuel Johnson, The plays of William Shakespeare, Vol. I (1765), Preface.
• When I read Shakespeare I am struck with wonder
  That such trivial people should muse and thunder
  In such lovely language.
• D. H. Lawrence, "When I read Shakespeare," from Pansies (1929).
• Shakespeare led a life of Allegory; his works are the comments on it.
• John Keats, in a letter to George and Georgiana Keats (19 February 1819).
• Shakespeare — the nearest thing in incarnation to the eye of God.
• Laurence Olivier, quoted in Kenneth Harris, "Sir Laurence Olivier," from Kenneth Harris Talking To... (1971).
• The shape of the Globe gives words power, but you're the wordsmith! The one true genius; the only one clever enough to do it. … Trust yourself. When you're locked away in your room, the words just come, don't they, like magic. Words, the right sound, the right shape, the right rhythm, words that last forever. That's what you do, Will. You choose perfect words. Do it. Improvise!
• Gareth Roberts, The tenth incarnation of The Doctor in The Shakespeare Code episode of Doctor Who

1. Ralph Waldo Emerson

“He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life.