Are you including poetry? Because if so, things like Tennyson - 'Tis better to have loved and lost' - and Keats - 'Beauty is truth; truth, beauty' are pretty well-known. Also, in some circles, Gilbert and Sullivan (mostly Gilbert, I fancy) - 'I've got a little list'; 'What, never? Well, hardly ever!'; 'adding verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.' Mind you, my father and I tend to converse in quotations a lot of the time, so my findings may be skewed.
You're right about Hamlet, though; it's probably the most-quoted work after the KJV Bible. If we're leaving out 'deliberate' quotations I'd guess that it would come out ahead.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2009-09-24 05:18 pm (UTC)You're right about Hamlet, though; it's probably the most-quoted work after the KJV Bible. If we're leaving out 'deliberate' quotations I'd guess that it would come out ahead.