Ah, a marriage of true minds. According to Shakespeare’s famous love Sonnet 116, love is ever-fixed, unwavering, even in the bleakest times.
Written in 1609, here’s the complete verse to one of the most famous love poems ever written. Thank you, thank you, Mr. Shakespeare!
[sc: inlinead]Sonnet 116: The Marriage of True Minds
By William Shakespeare, 1609
Click here to download a pdf printable of Love Sonnet 116.
Shakespeare Love Quotes to Share
Need a little more Shakespearean inspiration for that perfect love endearment? Want to share a love saying with your significant other? Here are some ideas for Shakespeare’s quotes about love.
From As You Like It
If thou remember’st not the slightest folly
That ever love did make thee run into,
Thou hast not loved.
From Romeo and Juliet
My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.
From Venus and Adonis
Love is a spirit all compact of fire.
From The Tempest
Hear my soul speak:
The very instant that I saw you, did
My heart fly to your service.
From Hamlet
Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.
From Love’s Labour’s Lost
When Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.
From Twelfth Night
If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
From Cymbeline
I can express no kinder sign of love, than this kind kiss.
[sc: bottomad]A Modern Cento Poem of Shakespearean Love
Shakespeare Advises You on Our Situation
A Poem By Ollie Bowen, Author of On the Occasion of a Wedding
Do you not know she is a woman?
When she thinks, she must speak,
and she speaks an infinite deal of nothing.
O, full of scorpions is her mind!
Do not challenge her to a battle of wits,
for she is unarmed. Dispute not with her: she is a lunatic.
Can thou truly ever love a fool?
Love her!…why?!? For which of her bad parts
didst thou first fall in love with her?
There is no evil angel but her.
She looks like the innocent flower,
but she be the serpent under it.
She be madness, though perhaps there is method in her.
For she has eyes, and chose you.
Yet she loves not with her eyes, but with her mind.
Alas, reason and love
keep little company together nowadays.
The tears live in an onion
that should water this sorrow.
O shame! Where is thy blush?
Still I can never say that she was false of heart.
For she loves nothing in the world so well as you.
Is not that strange? Her passions are
made of nothing but the finest part of pure love.
The worst is this: her love is thy decay.
These violent delights have violent ends.
For the course of true love never did run smooth.
Love bears it out even to the edge of doom.
But if she and you be pleased, what’s that to me?
Love denied blights the soul we owe to God.
Thou are to wait, though waiting so be hell.
In black ink thy love may still shine bright.
Sit by her side, and let the world slip:
for thou shall ne’er be younger.
Grow together, like a double cherry,
seeming parted, but yet together;
two lovely berries moulded on one stem;
as two separate bodies, but with oneness of heart.
To be wise and in love exceeds man’s might.
So this above all: to thine own self be true.
A thousand times good night!
[Exit, pursued by a bear.]
Reprinted with permission of the author.
Click here to download a pdf printable of Shakespeare Advises You on Our Situation.
A Cento poem is an original work composed entirely of lines from other authors. In this case, the author has made a ‘patchwork’ of Shakespeare’s quotes into a love story. The word cento originally comes from the word ‘patchwork’ in Latin.
