A quotation about expectations is being widely shared on social media through a post, claiming that it was said by Shakespeare. Let us fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: William Shakespeare’s quotation about expectations and life advice.
Fact: There is no evidence to show that these words were written by William Shakespeare. Snopes highlighted in a fact-check that though the quote had some of the general ideas that Shakespeare wrote about, but the words were not written by Shakespeare himself. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
When we searched on the internet with relevant keywords, the second part of the quotation is attributed to another writer. The second part of the quote, which starts with ‘Before you speak, listen…’ could have been lifted from the poem, ‘Before You’ by William Arthur Ward, a 20th-century writer of inspirational proverbs. He wrote more than 100 articles, poems, and meditations published in magazines such as Reader’s Digest, Science of Mind, and various other publications.
Snopes wrote in an article stating that, though the quote had some of the general ideas that Shakespeare wrote about, the words were not written by Shakespeare himself as the language, the prose, the cadence is different from that of the quote. When debunking a similar claim, PolitiFact asked Abbie Weinberg, a research and reference librarian at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Abbie Weinberg said, “it’s definitely not a Shakespeare quote!”
Shakespeare’s writings that include ‘Life is short’ and ‘expectations’ were different from the lines mentioned in the quote.
To sum it up, there is no evidence to show that Shakespeare gave this quotation.
