Shakespeare quotes: All the world's a stage

Jaques:


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,

His acts being seven ages.

As You Like It Act 2, scene 7, 139–143

The idea that "all the world's a stage" was already clichéd when Shakespeare wrote As You Like It.
So Jaques is intended to sound at least a little pretentious here.
Jaques (pronounced "jay-keys" or "jay-kweez") is the resident sourpuss
in the Forest of Arden, home to political exiles, banished lovers, and
simple shepherds. Picking up on another character's stray suggestion
that the world is a "wide and universal theater," Jaques deploys the
theatrical metaphor for his famous speech on the Seven Ages of Man. The
first of these ages, according to Jaques, is infancy (when the babe is
found "Mewling [sobbing] and puking in his nurse's arms"), and the last
is "second childishness and mere oblivion" (complete senility). His
glum epigrams make up a "set speech"; Shakespeare meant them to sound
practiced, like a bit of oratory polished off and hauled out on the
appropriate (or inappropriate) occasion.