William Shakespeare Law Quotations

Lawless are they that make their wills their law.

Religious canons, civil laws, are cruel; then what should war be?

I am a subject, And I challenge law. Attorneys are denied me, And therefore personally I lay my claim To my inheritance of free descent.

When law can do no right, Let it be lawful that law bar no wrong.

Faith, I have been a truant in the law And never yet could frame my will to it, And therefore frame the law unto my will.

I beseech you, Wrest once the law to your authority: To do a great right, do a little wrong.

Let not our babbling dreams affright our souls; Conscience is but a work that cowards use, Devised at first to keep the strong in awe: Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law!

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

There is a law in each well-ordered nation To curb those raging appetites that are Most disobedient and refractory.

Charity itself fulfills the law. And who can sever love from charity?

To offend and judge are distinct offices, And of opposed natures.

The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept.

We must not make a scarecrow of the law, Setting it up to fear the birds of prey, And let it keep one shape till custom make it Their perch, and not their terror.

That which I would discover The law of friendship bids me to conceal.

In law, what plea so tainted and corrupts, but being seasoned with a gracious voice obscures the show of evil.

And do as adversaries do in law, strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.

The hand that hath made you fair hath made you good. Pity is the virtue of the law, and none but tyrants use it cruelly.

The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law. - Romeo

Death is my son-in-law. Death is my heir. My daughter he hath wedded. I will die, And leave him all. Life, living, all is Death’s.

The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps o'er a cold decree.

Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh.

Death is my son-in-law, death is my heir.

Help, master, help! here's a fish hangs in the net, like a poor man's right in the law; 'twill hardly come out.

If I shall be condemned Upon surmises, all proofs sleeping else But what your jealousies awake, I tell you 'Tis rigor and not law.

I am not worthy of the wealth I owe, nor dare I say 'tis mine, and yet it is; but, like a timorous thief, most fain would steal what law does vouch mine own.