Quotes about Shakespeare

"To Thine Ownself Be True"

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.

Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell;
Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace,
Yet grace must still look so.

A wretched soul, bruised with adversity,
We bid be quiet when we hear it cry;
But were we burdened with like weight of pain,
As much or more we should ourselves complain.

There is, of course, much that is wise and consoling and beautiful in our religious books.  But words of wisdom and consolation and beauty abound in the pages of Shakespeare, Virgil, and Homer as well, and no one ever murdered strangers by the thousands because of the inspiration he found there.  The belief that certain books were written by God (who, for reasons difficult to fathom, made Shakespeare a far better writer than himself) leaves us powerless to address the most potent source of human conflict, past and present.  How is it that the absurdity of this idea does not bring us, hourly, to our knees?  It is safe to say that few of us would have thought so many people could believe such a thing, if they did not actually believe it.  Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him.  Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98.  Could anything – anything – be more ridiculous?  And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in.

"Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ‘em."

The unseen energy that was once in Shakespeare or Picasso or Galileo or any human form, is also available to all of us. That is because the spirit energy does not die, it simply changes form.

Early in my research, that strange phenomenon which Carl Jung called synchronicity brought me in touch with the single most amazing Baconian artifact I could have imagined. Most readers are familiar with such surprising events. Suddenly out of nowhere, just at the right time and the right place, some essential object or information will appear, as though a genie had been at work behind the scenes.

For me this surprise came in the shape of a strange wooden contraption known as a cipher wheel. On the printed pages affixed to it, in a most ingenious code is recorded the true story of Francis Bacon-an account actually and incredibly written by him in his own words. It is a story that changes the current concept of English history. No longer was guesswork necessary. Now the task was to fit the details of Bacon's life, as the cipher gives it, into accepted records of history.

The Shakespeare Code is my attempt to do just that and to explain what the cipher wheel is and why Bacon felt the need to create the ciphers. It is a poignant and tragic tale-but one that ends on an unexpected note of triumph. It is a story that is crying out to be told.

There's magic to love... Millions of years ago we evolved three basic drives: the sex love, romantic love, and attachment to a long-term partner. These circuits are deeply embedded in the human brian. They're going to survive as long as our species survive on what Shakespeare called, this "mortal coil."