William Shakespeare - A Midsummer Night's Dream (1600)

45 Sourced Quotes

View all William Shakespeare Quotes
Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell:
It fell upon a little western flower,
Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound,
And maidens call it, Love-in-idleness.

William Shakespeare
Now the hungry lion roars,
And the wolf behowls the moon;
Whilst the heavy ploughman snores,
All with weary task fordone.

William Shakespeare
What hempen home-spuns have we swaggering here,
So near the cradle of the fairy queen?

William Shakespeare
I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was.

William Shakespeare
Not a mouse
Shall disturb this hallowed house:
I am sent with broom before,
To sweep the dust behind the door.

William Shakespeare
I'll put a girdle round about the earth
In forty minutes.

William Shakespeare
O! when she's angry she is keen and shrewd.
She was a vixen when she went to school:
And though she be but little, she is fierce.

William Shakespeare
We do not come, as minding to content you,
Our true intent is. All for your delight,
We are not here …

William Shakespeare
…Night's swift dragons cut the clouds full fast,
And yonder shines Aurora's harbinger;
At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there,
Troop home to churchyards.

William Shakespeare
Weaving spiders come not here;
Hence you long-legged spinners, hence!
Beetles black, approach not near;
Worm nor snail, do no offence.

William Shakespeare
The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve;
Lovers, to bed; 'tis almost fairy time.

William Shakespeare
Merry and tragical! tedious and brief!
That is, hot ice and wondrous strange snow.

William Shakespeare
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours,
In those freckles live their savours:
I must go seek some dew-drops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.

William Shakespeare
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,
Are of imagination all compact.

William Shakespeare
To say the truth, reason and love keep little company together now-a-days.

William Shakespeare
I have a reasonable good ear in music: let us have the tongs and the bones.

William Shakespeare
I was with Hercules and Cadmus once,
When in a wood of Crete they bayed the bear
With hounds of Sparta: never did I hear…
So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.

William Shakespeare
To live a barren sister all your life,
Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon.

William Shakespeare
A surfeit of the sweetest things
the deepest loathing to the stomach brings.

William Shakespeare
The wildest hath not such a heart as you. Run when you will, the story shall be changed: Apollo flies, and Daphne holds the chase; The dove pursues the griffin; the mild hind Makes speed to catch the tiger; bootless speed, When cowardice pursues and valour flies.

William Shakespeare
Two lovely berries moulded on one stem;
So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart.

William Shakespeare
The fold stands empty in the drowned field,
And crows are fatted with the murrain flock;
The nine men's morris is filled up with mud.

William Shakespeare
For night's swift dragons cut the clouds full fast, And yonder shines Aurora's harbinger; At whose approach ghosts wandring here and there Troop home to church-yards.... For fear lest day should look their shames upon, They willfully exile themselves from light, And must for aye consort with black brow'd night.

William Shakespeare
Pyramus is a sweet-faced man; a proper man, as one shall see in a summer's day.

William Shakespeare
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear.

William Shakespeare
Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound;
And through this distemperature we see
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose.

William Shakespeare
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.

William Shakespeare
Follow? Nay, I'll go with thee, cheek by jowl.

William Shakespeare
You spotted snakes with double tongue,
Thorny hedge-hogs, be not seen;
Newts, and blind-worms, do no wrong;
Come not near our fairy queen.

William Shakespeare
The lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven.

William Shakespeare