William Shakespeare · 246 pages
Rating: (192.3K votes)
“Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever,-
One foot in sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never.”
“I can see he's not in your good books,' said the messenger.
'No, and if he were I would burn my library.”
“I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow, than a man swear he loves me.”
“Let me be that I am and seek not to alter me.”
“I do love nothing in the world so well as you- is not that strange?”
“Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.”
“He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man. He that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him.”
“For which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me?”
“When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.”
“There was a star danced, and under that was I born. ”
“I wish my horse had the speed of your tongue.”
“Why, what's the matter,
That you have such a February face,
So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?”
“Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably.”
“I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest.”
“BEATRICE
Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner.
BENEDICK
Fair Beatrice, I thank you for your pains.
BEATRICE
I took no more pains for those thanks than you take
pains to thank me: if it had been painful, I would
not have come.
BENEDICK
You take pleasure then in the message?
BEATRICE
Yea, just so much as you may take upon a knife's
point ... You have no stomach,
signior: fare you well.
Exit
BENEDICK
Ha! 'Against my will I am sent to bid you come in
to dinner;' there's a double meaning in that...”
“A miracle. Here's our own hands against our hearts. Come, I will have thee, but by this light I take thee for pity.
Beatrice: I would not deny you, but by this good day, I yield upon great persuasion, and partly to save your life, for I was told you were in a consumption.
Benedick: Peace. I will stop your mouth.”
“What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living?
Beatrice: Is it possible disdain should die while she hath
such meet food to feed it as Signior Benedick?”
“Silence is the perfectest herault of joy. I were but little happy if I could say how much.”
“Then is courtesy a turncoat. But it is certain I am loved of all ladies, only you excepted: and I would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart; for, truly, I love none.
Beatrice: A dear happiness to women: they would else have been troubled with a pernicious suitor. I thank God and my cold blood, I am of your humour for that: I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me. -Much Ado About Nothing”
“For it falls out
That what we have we prize not to the worth
Whiles we enjoy it, but being lacked and lost,
Why, then we rack the value, then we find
The virtue that possession would not show us
While it was ours.”
“Officers, what offence have these men done?
DOGBERRY
Marry, sir, they have committed false report; moreover, they have spoken untruths; secondarily, they are slanders; sixth and lastly, they have
belied a lady; thirdly, they have verified unjust things; and, to conclude, they are lying knaves.”
“I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thy
eyes—and moreover, I will go with thee to thy uncle’s.”
“Tax not so bad a voice to slander music any more than once.”
“LEONATO
Well, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband.
BEATRICE
Not till God make men of some other metal than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered with a pierce of valiant dust? to make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl? No, uncle, I'll none: Adam's sons are my brethren; and, truly, I hold it a sin to match in my kindred.”
“You are thought here to the most senseless and fit man for the job.”
“Is it not strange that sheep's guts could hail souls out of men's bodies?”
“For man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion.”
“Ha. "Against my will I am sent to bid you come into dinner." There's a double meaning in that.
-Benedick (Much Ado)”
“LEONATO
Well, then, go you into hell?
BEATRICE
No, but to the gate; and there will the devil meet me, like an old cuckold, with horns on his head, and say 'Get you to heaven, Beatrice, get you to heaven; here's no place for you maids:' so deliver I up my apes, and away to Saint Peter for the heavens; he shows me where the bachelors sit, and there live we as merry as the day is long.”
“I have come here not to find answers, but to find a way to live in a world without any.”
“Very little in this world makes sense.”
“however many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead, or rather not alive. You may throw cells together at random, over and over again for a billion years, and not once will you get a conglomeration that flies or swims or burrows or runs, or does anything, even badly, that could remotely be construed as working to keep itself alive.”
“You can't change the desert. You can only take the fastest course through it. Wishing it's an oasis won't make it so...”
“If we say that we have no sin,
We deceive ourselves, and there's no truth in us.
Why then belike we must sin,
And so consequently die.
Ay, we must die an everlasting death.”
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