What Shakespeare Actually Wrote in His Most Famous Lines

Shakespeare may be the most quoted writer in English, and a surprising share of what gets quoted is a near miss. A word drifts, a line gets trimmed, or a speech gets lifted out of a scene that makes it mean the opposite. None of it is dramatic. All of it is checkable.

This list does the checking. Each quote is given in the wording of the Folger Shakespeare Library edition, with the play, act and scene, and compared where it matters with the public-domain text hosted by MIT.

What are the most famous Shakespeare quotes?

The most famous Shakespeare quotes come from a handful of plays, and Hamlet supplies several of them. "To be, or not to be, that is the question" opens the soliloquy in Act 3, Scene 1. "All the world's a stage" belongs to Jaques in As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7. "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown" is the king's line in Henry IV, Part 2, Act 3, Scene 1.

Two more from the history and Roman plays round out most short lists. Cassius tells Brutus "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves, that we are underlings" in Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 2. Which Caesar lines are Shakespeare's and which are the Roman's own is a separate story, told in what Julius Caesar actually said. Prospero's "We are such stuff / As dreams are made on" closes the masque in The Tempest, Act 4, Scene 1.

Notice the last one. Most people say "made of." The play says "made on." That small slip is the pattern for everything below.

Which Shakespeare quotes do people get wrong?

The quotes people get wrong are usually off by a single word, and the table shows the common version beside what the Folger text actually prints.

What people say	What the play says	Where it comes from
"Gild the lily"	"To gild refined gold, to paint the lily"	King John, Act 4, Scene 2 (Salisbury)
"Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him well"	"Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio"	Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 1
"Lead on, Macduff"	"Lay on, Macduff"	Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 8
"Methinks the lady doth protest too much"	"The lady doth protest too much, methinks"	Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2 (Gertrude)
"Discretion is the better part of valor"	"The better part of valor is discretion"	Henry IV, Part 1, Act 5, Scene 4 (Falstaff)
"Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble"	"Double, double toil and trouble"	Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 1 (the witches)
"Out, out, damn spot"	"Out, damned spot, out, I say!"	Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 1 (Lady Macbeth)
"Once more into the breach"	"Once more unto the breach, dear friends"	Henry V, Act 3, Scene 1

Some of these matter more than others. "Lay on" is a challenge to fight, not an invitation to lead the way, and Macbeth says it moments before he dies. Falstaff's line is a joke at his own expense: he has just faked his death to avoid a fight.

Is it "gild the lily" or "paint the lily"?

It is "paint the lily," and the full line lists several kinds of pointless improvement. In King John, Act 4, Scene 2, Salisbury objects to the king being crowned a second time, calling it like trying "To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, / To throw a perfume on the violet."

Somewhere along the way the gold and the lily merged into one phrase, and "gild the lily" became the standard way to say "overdo it." The meaning survived the edit. The words did not.

Is it "all that glitters" or "all that glisters"?

Both appear in respected editions, which makes this the most interesting case on the list. The line is written on a scroll found inside the gold casket in The Merchant of Venice, Act 2, Scene 7, and read aloud by the Prince of Morocco after he picks the wrong one.

The Folger edition prints "All that glisters is not gold." The older Globe-based text that MIT hosts prints "All that glitters is not gold." Neither is a typo; they reflect different editorial choices, and "glisters" is simply an older word for the same thing.

A similar split shows up in the opening line of Richard III, Act 1, Scene 1. Folger prints "Made glorious summer by this son of York," keeping the pun on Edward IV as the son of the Duke of York. MIT prints "sun." If you are putting a line on a wall, pick an edition and stick with it.

Which quotes mean something different in context?

Several of the best-known lines mean something different once you know who says them and why. These are the ones most often misread.

1. "O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" (Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2). "Wherefore" means why, not where. Juliet is asking why he has to be a Montague.
2. "Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this son of York" (Richard III, Act 1, Scene 1). The winter is over. Richard is describing peace, and he hates it.
3. "This above all: to thine own self be true" (Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3). It is the advice of Polonius, a meddler the play mostly treats as a fool.
4. "Brevity is the soul of wit" (Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2). Polonius again, in the middle of a famously long-winded speech.
5. "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers" (Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2). Dick the Butcher, one of Jack Cade's rebels, says it while planning a takeover.
6. "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em" (Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 5). Malvolio reads it from a forged letter planted to make a fool of him.

None of this makes the lines unusable. It just means "to thine own self be true" was written as a joke about a man who gives advice he never takes.

Which everyday phrases come from Shakespeare?

A long list of everyday phrases appears in the plays in the form we still use. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust collects them as phrases we attribute to the plays, and each of these checks out against the text:

• "It was Greek to me" (Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 2, Casca)
• "Wild-goose chase" (Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 4, Mercutio)
• "Break the ice" (The Taming of the Shrew, Act 1, Scene 2)
• "The green-eyed monster" (Othello, Act 3, Scene 3, Iago, on jealousy)
• "A foregone conclusion" (Othello, Act 3, Scene 3)
• "The be-all and the end-all" (Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 7)
• "Into thin air" (The Tempest, Act 4, Scene 1)

The careful wording matters. On its companion page about Shakespeare's words, the Trust says his works give the first recorded use of more than 1,700 words and that he may have invented many of them, adding that lexicographers keep discovering earlier origins. First recorded is not the same as coined. What is certain is that the plays are where most of us first met these phrases.

How can you check a Shakespeare quote yourself?

Search the play, not the internet. Quote sites copy each other, so one wrong word can spread across hundreds of pages. A full text of the play settles it in seconds.

Start with the Folger text, which is free online and arranged by act and scene. Search a distinctive word rather than the whole sentence, because the line you remember may be slightly off. "Yorick" finds the graveyard scene faster than "I knew him well," which does not exist.

Then check who is speaking. A line said by a villain, a clown or a liar can still be worth quoting, but it helps to know whose mouth it came from before you put it on a wall or in a toast.

Which Shakespeare quotes work on a wall?

Short lines with a complete thought work best, because they read in one glance and do not need the scene around them. "We are such stuff / As dreams are made on" and "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars" both hold up to daily viewing.

A portrait of the man himself is the other route. Shakespeare Sampled paints him at the Globe in period dress, headphones on, editing Hamlet on a tablet. Few writers have been borrowed from more, which is the joke in the title. Like every piece in the series it is one gallery-wrapped canvas on a solid pine frame, ready to hang and made to order in Europe, with a floating frame as an optional upgrade.

It sits with other painted leaders, from Caesar and Cleopatra to Henry VIII, all three of whom Shakespeare put on stage, in the historical figure wall art collection. For more on choosing words to live with, see how to choose quote wall art that means something, and for the musical side of the series, our guide to music wall art.