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
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