Quotes from A Midsummer Night's Dream

William Shakespeare ·  298 pages

Rating: (383.2K votes)


“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream


“Though she be but little, she is fierce!”
― William Shakespeare, quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream


“Lord, what fools these mortals be!”
― William Shakespeare, quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream


“The course of true love never did run smooth.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream


“And yet,to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream



“Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream


“My soul is in the sky.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream


“The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream


“If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
If you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream


“Are you sure/That we are awake? It seems to me/That yet we sleep, we dream”
― William Shakespeare, quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream



“I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream


“I’ll follow thee and make a heaven of hell,
To die upon the hand I love so well.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream


“Lovers and madmen have such seething brains
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.

― William Shakespeare, quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream


“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, quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream


“Love's stories written in love's richest books.
To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream



“So we grew together,
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
But yet an union in partition,
Two lovely berries moulded on one stem.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream


“Thus I die. Thus, thus, thus.
Now I am dead,
Now I am fled,
My soul is in the sky.
Tongue, lose thy light.
Moon take thy flight.
Now die, die, die, die.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream


“I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream


“And sleep, that sometime shuts up sorrow's eye, Steal me awhile from mine own company.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream


“For you, in my respect, are all the world.
Then how can it be said I am alone
When all the world is here to look on me?”
― William Shakespeare, quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream



“Things base and vile, holding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity.
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
Nor hath Love's mind of any judgment taste;
Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream


“Oh why rebuke you him that loves you so? / Lay breath so bitter on your bitter foe.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream


“If we shadows have offended,
Know but this and all is mended.
That you have but slumbered here,
While these visions did appear,
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding, but a dream.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream


“Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania”
― William Shakespeare, quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream


“O me, you juggler, you canker-blossom, you thief of love!”
― William Shakespeare, quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream



“Ay me! for aught that ever I could read,
could ever hear by tale or history,
the course of true love never did run smooth.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream


“Up and down, up and down
I will lead them up and down
I am feared in field in town
Goblin, lead them up and down”
― William Shakespeare, quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream


“Therefore another prologue must tell he is not a lion”
― William Shakespeare, quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream


“Yet but three come one more.
Two of both kinds make up four.
Ere she comes curst and sad.
Cupid is a knavish lad.
Thus to make poor females mad.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream


About the author

William Shakespeare
Born place: Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, The United Kingdom
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“art is not just a heightened procedure of providing sensual pleasures, but a medium of Truth;”
― Slavoj Žižek, quote from The Parallax View


“in our culture, women can do anything a man can. and vice versa."
don alfonso's eyebrows shot up. "i do not believe it."
"it's true," sally said defiantly.
"in America, the women hunt while the men have babies?”
― Douglas Preston, quote from The Codex


“But what is it, to be an artist? Nothing shows up the general human dislike of thinking, and man's innate craving to be comfortable, better than his attitude to this question. When these worthy people are affected by a work of art, they humbly say that that sort of thing is a 'gift.' And because in their innocence they assume that beautiful and uplifting results must have beautiful and uplifting causes, they never dream that the 'gift' in question is a very dubious affair and rests upon extremely sinister foundations.
[...]
Listen to this. I know a banker, grey-haired business man, who has a gift for
writing stories. He employs this gift in his idle hours, and some of his stories are of the
first rank. But despiteI say despite-this excellent gift his withers are by no means
unwrung: on the contrary, he has had to serve a prison sentence, on anything but trifling
grounds. Yes, it was actually first in prison that he became conscious of his gift, and his
experiences as a convict are the main theme in all his works. One might be rash enough
to conclude that a man has to be at home in some kind of jail in order to become a poet.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories


“I just want you to know that I love you with everything I am—a million times a million and to the moon and back.”
― Laura Miller, quote from My Butterfly


“I was looking forward to my visit to the library. I’ve always been a big reader and thought I might eventually volunteer as a Friend of the Library.”
― Debbie Macomber, quote from The Inn at Rose Harbor


Interesting books

The Saving Graces
(14.6K)
The Saving Graces
by Patricia Gaffney
No Logo
(22.1K)
No Logo
by Naomi Klein
Gideon
(13.6K)
Gideon
by Jacquelyn Frank
One Good Knight
(9.6K)
One Good Knight
by Mercedes Lackey
The Algebraist
(15.5K)
The Algebraist
by Iain M. Banks
Master of the Senate
(12.6K)
Master of the Senate
by Robert A. Caro

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.