Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream is a classic play that has inspired generations of readers and viewers with its magical themes and memorable quotes. From the humorous lines of Bottom to the passionate utterances of Oberon, the characters in this play have something for everyone. In this post, I feature some of the best Midsummer Night’s Dream quotes that capture its timelessness and beauty.
[Related: Midsummer Night’s Dream Summary]
1. “The course of true love never did run smooth.”
2. “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind. Nor hath love’s mind of any judgment taste; Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste: And therefore is love said to be a child, Because in choice he is so oft beguil’d.”
3. “I must go seek some dewdrops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear.”
4. “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.”
5. “Bless thee, Bottom! Bless thee! Thou art translated.”
6. “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:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight.”
7. “If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear.”
8. To say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays.
9. “Jack shall have Jill,
Nought shall go ill,
The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well.”
10. I have had a most rare vision. I had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was… 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.
11. “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 a 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.”
12. “I’ll follow thee and make a heaven of hell,
To die upon the hand I love so well.”
13.“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”
14. “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.”
15.“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.”
16. “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.”
17.“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?”
18.“It is not night when I do see your face,
Therefore I think I am not in the night;
Nor doth this wood lack worlds of company,
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?”
19. “So we grew together,
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
But yet an union in partition,
Two lovely berries moulded on one stem.”
20.“Are you sure
That we are awake? It seems to me
That yet we sleep, we dream.”
