Gratitude for Shakespeare's Take on Love, Rather than the Prettied-up Version

I was helping my son study for a test on Romeo & Juliet and it made me curious about Shakespeare's take on love.

What does Romeo & Juliet teach us about love?

That love is complicated, a force of nature, a caldron of intense passion. Shakespeare shows us that the raw emotion of love can make people rise up and rebel against their world.

Artists want their work to live forever and Romeo & Juliet continues to be taught in classrooms throughout the world to teenagers. This means the world's greatest writer in the English language continues to have an impact on impressionable young minds like my son.

I'm grateful for this because I'm a romantic and we romantics relish a deeper picture of love rather than the prettied up version.

For Shakespeare enthusiasts, here are his top 10 most famous quotes:

• "To be, or not to be: that is the question." (Hamlet)
• "All the world 's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts." (As You Like it)
• "Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?"(Romeo and Juliet)
• "Now is the winter of our discontent." (Richard III)
• "Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?"(Macbeth)
• "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them." (Twelfth Night)
• "Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once." (Julius Caesar)
• "Full fathom five thy father lies, of his bones are coral made. Those are pearls that were his eyes. Nothing of him that doth fade, but doth suffer a sea-change into something rich and strange." (The Tempest)
• "A man can die but once." (Henry IV, Part 2)
• "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!"(King Lear)

Check out our inspiring video at www.gratitudereport.com.