BEROWNE: What, I! I love! I sue! I seek a wife!
A woman, that is like a German clock,
Still a-repairing, ever out of frame,
And never going aright, being a watch,
But being watch'd that it may still go right!
Love's Labor's Lost, III, i
HOLOFERNES: This is a gift that I have, simple, simple; a foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions: these are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater, and delivered upon the mellowing of occasion.
Love's Labor's Lost, IV, ii
HOLOFERNES: A good lustre of conceit in a tuft of earth; fire enough for a flint, pearl enough for a swine. 'Tis pretty; it is well.
Love's Labor's Lost, IV, ii
BEROWNE: From women's eyes this doctrine I derive;
They are the ground, the books, the academes
From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire.
Love's Labor's Lost, IV, iii
BEROWNE: Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves,
Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths.
Love's Labor's Lost, IV, iii
HOLOFERNES: He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.
Love's Labor's Lost, V, i
HOLOFERNES: Via, goodman Dull! Thou hast spoken no word all this while.
DULL: Nor understood none neither, sir.
Love's Labor's Lost, V, i
KATHARINE: He made her melancholy, sad, and heavy;
And so she died: had she been light, like you,
Of such a merry, nimble, stirring spirit,
She might ha' been a grandam ere she died:
And so may you; for a light heart lives long.
Love's Labor's Lost, V, ii
BEROWNE: This fellow pecks up wit as pigeons pease,
And utters it again when God doth please.
Love's Labor's Lost, V, ii
PRINCESS: A time, methinks, too short
To make a world-without-end bargain in.
Love's Labor's Lost, V, ii
ROSALINE: A jest's prosperity lies in the ear
Of him that hears it, never in the tongue
Of him that makes it.
Love's Labor's Lost, V, ii
ARMADO: The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo. You that way: we this way.
Love's Labor's Lost, V, ii
LYSANDER: You have her father's love, Demetrius;
Let me have Hermia's: do you marry him.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, I, i
LYSANDER: The course of true love never did run smooth.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, I, i
HERMIA: By all the vows that ever men have broke,
In number more than ever women spoke.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, I, i
HELENA: Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, I, i
FLUTE: Nay, faith, let me not play a woman; I have a beard coming.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, I, ii
BOTTOM: I'll speak in a monstrous little voice.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, I, ii
FAIRY: Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire,
I do wander everywhere.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, II, i
FAIRY: Are not you he
That frights the maidens of the villagery;
Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm;
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?
A Midsummer Night's Dream, II, i
PUCK: Thou speak'st aright;
I am that merry wanderer of the night.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, II, i
OBERON: Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, II, i
TITANIA: Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea
Contagious fogs; which falling in the land
Have every pelting river made so proud
That they have overborne their continents.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, II, i
PUCK: I'll put a girdle round about the earth
In forty minutes.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, II, i
BOTTOM: A calendar, a calendar! look in the almanac.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, III, i
PUCK: I'll follow you, I'll lead you about a round,
Through bog, through bush, through brake, through brier:
Sometime a horse I'll be, sometime a hound,
A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire;
And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn,
Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, III, i
BOTTOM: And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together now-a-days.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, III, i
PUCK: For briers and thorns at their apparel snatch;
Some sleeves, some hats, from yielders all things catch.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, III, ii
PUCK: I go, I go; look how I go,
Swifter than arrow from the Tartar's bow.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, III, ii
PUCK: Lord, what fools these mortals be!
A Midsummer Night's Dream, III, ii
PUCK: And those things do best please me
That befall preposterously.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, III, ii
HERMIA: Dark night, that from the eye his function takes,
The ear more quick of apprehension makes;
Wherein it doth impair the seeing sense,
It pays the hearing double recompense.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, III, ii
HELENA: And though she be but little, she is fierce.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, III, ii
PUCK: Damned spirits all,
That in crossways and floods have burial,
Already to their wormy beds are gone;
For fear lest day should look their shames upon,
They willfully themselves exile from light
And must for aye consort with black-brow'd night.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, III, ii
OBERON: Then, my queen, in silence sad,
Trip we after the night's shade:
We the globe can compass soon,
Swifter than the wandering moon.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, IV, i
HIPPOLYTA: I never heard so musical a discord, such sweet thunder.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, IV, i
BOTTOM: I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was: man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was--there is no man can tell what. Methought I was,--and methought I had,--but man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, IV, i