Midsummer Night's Dream Quotes

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.

Though she be but little, she is fierce!

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

The course of true love never did run smooth; But, either it was different in blood, O cross! too high to be enthrall’d to low. Or else misgraffed in respect of years, O spite! too old to be engag’d to young. Or else it stood upon the choice of friends, O hell! to choose love by another’s eye.

A tragedy is a tragedy, and at the bottom, all tragedies are stupid. Give me a choice and I'll take A Midsummer Night's Dream over Hamlet every time. Any fool with steady hands and a working set of lungs can build up a house of cards and then blow it down, but it takes a genius to make people laugh.

And yet,to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays.

My soul is in the sky.

Are you sure That we are awake? It seems to me That yet we sleep, we 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.

I’ll follow thee and make a heaven of hell, To die upon the hand I love so well.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Love's stories written in love's richest books. To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes.

So we grew together, Like to a double cherry, seeming parted, But yet an union in partition, Two lovely berries moulded on one stem.

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.

And sleep, that sometime shuts up sorrow's eye, Steal me awhile from mine own 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?

Take pains. Be perfect.

If you expect me to believe that a lawyer wrote A Midsummer Night's Dream, I must be dafter than I look.

Oh why rebuke you him that loves you so? / Lay breath so bitter on your bitter foe.

Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania

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.

O me, you juggler, you canker-blossom, you thief of love!

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.

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

Therefore another prologue must tell he is not a lion

We will meet; and there we may rehearse most obscenely and courageously. Shakespeare, Midsummer Night's Dream. Spoken by Bottom, Act I Sc. 2

The clamorous owl, that nightly hoots and wonders At out quaint spirits.

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold

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.

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?

You've never heard of the Trickster King?" Puck asked, shocked. The girls shook their heads. "The Prince of Fairies? Robin Goodfellow? The Imp?" "Do you work for Santa?" Daphne asked. "I'm a fairy, not an elf!" Puck roared. "You really don't know who I am! Doesn't anyone read the classics anymore? Dozens of writers have warned about me. I'm in the most famous of all of William Shakespeare's plays." "I don't remember any Puck in Romeo and Juliet," Sabrina muttered, feeling a little amused at how the boy was reacting to his non-celebrity. "Besides Romeo and Juliet!" Puck shouted. "I'm the star of a Midsummer Night's Dream!" "Congratulation," Sabrina said flatly. "Never read it.

My Oberon, what visions have I seen! Methought I was enamored of an ass.

Shall we their fond pageant see? Lord, what fools these mortals be!

So quick bright things come to confusion.

O, then, what graces in my love do dwell, That he hath turn'd a heaven unto a hell!

Get you gone, you dwarf, You minimus of hindering knotgrass made, You bead, you acorn!

Captain of our fairy band, Helena is here at hand, And the youth, mistook by me, Pleading for a lover's fee. Shall we their fond pageant see? Lord, what fools these mortals be!

How Low am I, thou painted Maypole? Speak: How Low am I? I am not yet so Low But that my Nails can reach unto thine Eyes

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

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.

Four days will quickly steep themselves in nights; Four nights will quickly dream away the time; And then the moon, like to a silver bow new bent in heaven, shall behold the night of our solemnities.

The iron tongue of Midnight hath told twelve lovers, to bed; 'tis almost fairy time. I fear we shall outstep the coming morn as much as we this night over-watch'd.

O Helena, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine! To what, my love, shall I compare thine eyne? Crystal is muddy. O, how ripe in show Thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow!

Let me play the lion too: I will roar that I will do any man's heart good to hear me. I will roar that I will make the duke say 'Let him roar again, let him roar again.

Here come the lovers, full of joy and mirth.— Joy, gentle friends! joy and fresh days of love Accompany your hearts!

Why should you think that I should woo in scorn? Scorn and derision never come in tears: Look, when I vow, I weep; and vows so born, In their nativity all truth appears. How can these things in me seem scorn to you, Bearing the badge of faith, to prove them true?

Relent, sweet Hermia: and, Lysander, yield Thy crazed title to my certain right. LYSANDER You have her father's love, Demetrius; Let me have Hermia's: do you marry him.

O, teach me how you look, and with what art You sway the motion of Demetrius' heart."-Helena

WHAT WAS LOST IN THE COLLAPSE: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty. Twilight in the altered world, a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in a parking lot in the mysteriously named town of St. Deborah by the Water, Lake Michigan shining a half mile away.

Methought I was enamour'd of an ass.

If there were a sympathy in choice, War, death, or sickness, did lay siege to it, Making it momentary as a sound, Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, Brief as the lightning in the collied night That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, And ere a man hath power to say 'Behold!' The jaws of darkness do devour it up; So quick bright things come to confusion.

and at the bottom, all tragedies are stupid. Give me a choice and I'll take A Midsummer Night's Dream over Hamlet every time. Any fool with steady hands and a working set of lungs can build up a house of cards and then blow it down, but it takes a genius to make people laugh.

I will not trust you, I, Nor longer stay in your curst company. Your hands than mine are quicker for a fray, My legs are longer though, to run away.

Be as thou wast wont to be. See as thou wast wont to see.

Well?" Nat says after a few seconds. "I'm surprised you're here again, Harriet. I thought you'd be busy auditioning for A Midsummer Night's Dream." I blink a few times in surprise. "No. I'm not." "You should be. I heard they're looking for an ass." Oh. Now why can't I think of quips like that when I need them?

Through the forest have I gone. But Athenian found I none, On whose eyes I might approve This flower's force in stirring love. Night and silence.--Who is here? Weeds of Athens he doth wear: This is he, my master said, Despised the Athenian maid; And here the maiden, sleeping sound, On the dank and dirty ground. Pretty soul! she durst not lie Near this lack-love, this kill-courtesy. Churl, upon thy eyes I throw All the power this charm doth owe. When thou wakest, let love forbid Sleep his seat on thy eyelid: So awake when I am gone; For I must now to Oberon.

Thus have I, Wall, my part discharged so; And, being done, thus Wall away doth go.

How now, spirit! Whither wander you?

Give me your hands, if we be friends, and Robin shall restore amends.

Oh, take the sense, sweet, of my innocence. Love takes the meaning in love’s conference. I mean that my heart unto yours is knit So that but one heart we can make of it.

You have her father's love, Demetrius; Let me have Hermia's: do you marry him.

in the night, imagining some fear, How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan which moves To that mysterious realm where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustain'd and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams." Thanatopsis

I charge thee, hence, and do not haunt me thus.

Nay! Faith, let me not play a woman! I have a beard coming!

Francis Flute, the bellows-mender. FLUTE Here, Peter Quince. QUINCE Flute, you must take Thisby on you. FLUTE What is Thisby? a wandering knight? QUINCE It is the lady that Pyramus must love. FLUTE Nay, faith, let me not play a woman; I have a beard coming.

Farewell, sweet playfellow.

Ay, in the temple, in the town, the field, You do me mischief. Fie, Demetrius! Your wrongs do set a scandal on my sex: We cannot fight for love, as men ay do; We should be woo'd, and were not made to woo. I'll follow thee, and make a heaven of hell, To die upon the hand I love so well.

Because it is a customary cross, As die to love as thoughts, and dreams, and sighs, Wishes, and tears, poor fancy's followers.

Wherefore was I to this keen mockery born? When at your hands did I deserve this scorn? Is't not enough, is't not enough, young man, That I did never, no, nor never can, Deserve a sweet look from Demetrius' eye, But you must flout my insufficiency?

Who will not change a raven for a dove?

How now, my love? Why is your cheek so pale? How chance the roses there do fade so fast? Her. Belike for want of rain, which I could well beteem them from the tempest of my eyes.

فإني اعتقد أن الكلمات النابعة عن المحبة والإخلاص هي التي تصل إلى القلب حتى إن تلعثم قائلها في النطق بها.

Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason for that: and yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together now-a-days; the more the pity that some honest neighbours will not make them friends.

When in that moment,—so it came to pass,— Titania wak'd, and straightway lov'd an ass.

The will of man is by his reason sway'd;

it is not enough to speak, but to speak true

What hempen homespuns have we swaggering here...

Weaving spiders, come not here, Hence, you long legged spinners, hence! Beetles black, approach not here, worm nor snail, do no offense.

I was eighteen now, just gone. Eighteen was not a young age. At eighteen old Wolfgang Amadeus had written concertos and symphonies and operas and oratorios and all that cal, no, not cal, heavenly music. And then there was old Felix M. with his "Midsummer Night's Dream" Overture. And there were others. And there was this like French poet set by old Benjy Britt, who had done all his best poetry by the age of fifteen, O my brothers. Arthur, his first name. Eighteen was not all that young an age then. But what was I going to do?

The problem with a lot of people who read only literary fiction is that they assume fantasy is just books about orcs and goblins and dragons and wizards and bullshit. And to be fair, a lot of fantasy is about that stuff. The problem with people in fantasy is they believe that literary fiction is just stories about a guy drinking tea and staring out the window at the rain while he thinks about his mother. And the truth is a lot of literary fiction is just that. Like, kind of pointless, angsty, emo, masturbatory bullshit. However, we should not be judged by our lowest common denominators. And also you should not fall prey to the fallacious thinking that literary fiction is literary and all other genres are genre. Literary fiction is a genre, and I will fight to the death anyone who denies this very self-evident truth. So, is there a lot of fantasy that is raw shit out there? Absolutely, absolutely, it’s popcorn reading at best. But you can’t deny that a lot of lit fic is also shit. 85% of everything in the world is shit. We judge by the best. And there is some truly excellent fantasy out there. For example, Midsummer Night’s Dream; Hamlet with the ghost; Macbeth, ghosts and witches; I’m also fond of the Odyessey; Most of the Pentateuch in the Old Testament, Gargantua and Pantagruel. Honestly, fantasy existed before lit fic, and if you deny those roots you’re pruning yourself so closely that you can’t help but wither and die.

Brief as the lightning in the collied night; That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and Earth, And ere a man hath power to say "Behold!" The jaws of darkness do devour it up. So quick bright things come to confusion.

I will go tell him of Hermia's flight: Then to the wood will he to-morrow night Pursue her; and for this intelligence If I have thanks, it is a dear expense: But herein mean I to enrich my pain, To have his sight thither and back again.

Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms. Fairies, be gone, and be all ways away.

Over hill, over dale, Thorough bush, thorough brier, Over park, over pale, Thorough flood, thorough fire, I do wander everywhere, Swifter than the moon's sphere; And I serve the fairy queen, To dew her orbs upon the green. 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 dewdrops here And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear. Farewell, thou lob of spirits; I'll be gone: Our queen and all our elves come here anon.

Art is enchantment and artists have the right of spells. ... The success of later Shakespeare is the success of spells, where every element, however uneven, however incredible, is fastened to the next with perfect authority. The enchanted world shimmers but does not waver. A Midsummer Night's Dream is the first of his plays to accomplish this, The Tempest is enchantment's apotheosis.

O hell! to choose love by another's eyes!" "Or, if there were a sympathy in choice, War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it, Making it momentany as a sound, Swift as a shadow, short as any dream; Brief as the lighting in the collied night, That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, And ere a man hath pwer to say, 'Behold!' The jaws of darkness do devour it up: So quick bright things come to confusion.

Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour Draws on apace; four happy days bring in Another moon: but, O, methinks, how slow This old moon wanes! she lingers my desires, Like to a step-dame or a dowager Long withering out a young man revenue.

The image of a wood has appeared often enough in English verse. It has indeed appeared so often that it has gathered a good deal of verse into itself; so that it has become a great forest where, with long leagues of changing green between them, strange episodes of poetry have taken place. Thus in one part there are lovers of a midsummer night, or by day a duke and his followers, and in another men behind branches so that the wood seems moving, and in another a girl separated from her two lordly young brothers, and in another a poet listening to a nightingale but rather dreaming richly of the grand art than there exploring it, and there are other inhabitants, belonging even more closely to the wood, dryads, fairies, an enchanter's rout. The forest itself has different names in different tongues- Westermain, Arden, Birnam, Broceliande; and in places there are separate trees named, such as that on the outskirts against which a young Northern poet saw a spectral wanderer leaning, or, in the unexplored centre of which only rumours reach even poetry, Igdrasil of one myth, or the Trees of Knowledge and Life of another. So that indeed the whole earth seems to become this one enormous forest, and our longest and most stable civilizations are only clearings in the midst of it.

But we are spirits of another sort: I with the morning's love have oft made sport, And, like a forester, the groves may tread, Even till the eastern gate, all fiery-red, Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams, Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams.

It is often said that what sets Shakespeare apart is his ability to illuminate the workings of the soul and so on, and he does that superbly, goodness knows, but what really characterizes his work - every bit of it, in poems and plays and even dedications, throughout every portion of his career - is a positive and palpable appreciation of the transfixing power of language. A Midsummer Night's Dream remains an enchanting work after four hundred years, but few could argue that it cuts to the very heart of human behaviour. What it does is take, and give, a positive satisfaction in the joyous possibilities of verbal expression.

There are things in this comedy of Pyramus and Thisby that will never please. First, Pyramus must draw a sword to kill himself; which the ladies cannot abide. How answer you that? SNOUT By'r lakin, a parlous fear. STARVELING I believe we must leave the killing out, when all is done. BOTTOM Not a whit: I have a device to make all well. Write me a prologue; and let the prologue seem to say, we will do no harm with our swords, and that Pyramus is not killed indeed; and, for the more better assurance, tell them that I, Pyramus, am not Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver: this will put them out of fear. QUINCE Well, we will have such a prologue; and it shall be written in eight and six. BOTTOM No, make it two more; let it be written in eight and eight.

Either to die the death or to abjure For ever the society of men. Therefore, fair Hermia, question your desires; Know of your youth, examine well your blood, Whether, if you yield not to your father's choice, You can endure the livery of a nun, For aye to be in shady cloister mew'd, To live a barren sister all your life, Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon. Thrice-blessed they that master so their blood, To undergo such maiden pilgrimage; But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd, Than that which withering on the virgin thorn Grows, lives and dies in single blessedness.

Rhonda looped, as unmitigated suffering descended on her; one wave of thought crashed over another without sensible demarcation; bamboo leaves swayed in maddening winds; jaded wetness danced upon purpled drizzles on towering trapeze; grapefruit vines bottled in brine; dewdrops on her eyes. All this, as though, a nonsensical midsummer’s night dream had occurred in an enchanted forest under the influence of Puck’s flower juices, wavering in the moonlight like many of her dreams. A thin line separated reality from dream; like being on a continuum, further up, cross over to another reality; an illusory realisation of a past hollered. Our roles played, but in innate imperfection, to the tune of some charm thrust upon as disposition in this enchanted forest of life.

Injurious Hermia! most ungrateful maid! Have you conspired, have you with the contrived To bait me with this foul derision? Is all the counsel that we two have shared, The sisters' vows, the hours that we have spent, When we have chid the hasty-footed time For parting us,-O, and is all forgot? All school=days' friendship, childhood innocence? We, Hermia, like two artificial gods, Have with our neelds created both one flower, Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion, Both warbling of one song, both in one key; As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds, Had been incorporate. So we grew together, Like to a double cherry, seeming parted, But yet an union in partition; Two lovely berries moulded on one stem; So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart, Two of the first, like coats in heraldry, Due but to one, and crowned with one crest, And will you rent our ancient love asunder, To join with men in scorning your poor friend? It is not friendly, 'tis not maidenly: Our sex, as well as I, may chide you for it, Though I alone do feel the injury.

God speed fair Helena! whither away? HELENA Call you me fair? that fair again unsay. Demetrius loves your fair: O happy fair! Your eyes are lode-stars; and your tongue's sweet air More tuneable than lark to shepherd's ear, When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear. Sickness is catching: O, were favour so, Yours would I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go; My ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye, My tongue should catch your tongue's sweet melody. Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated, The rest I'd give to be to you translated. O, teach me how you look, and with what art You sway the motion of Demetrius' heart. HERMIA I frown upon him, yet he loves me still. HELENA O that your frowns would teach my smiles such skill! HERMIA I give him curses, yet he gives me love. HELENA O that my prayers could such affection move! HERMIA The more I hate, the more he follows me. HELENA The more I love, the more he hateth me. HERMIA His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine. HELENA None, but your beauty: would that fault were mine!

What do they think has happened, the old fools, To make them like this ? Do they somehow suppose It's more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools And you keep on pissing yourself, and can't remember Who called this morning ? Or that, if they only chose, They could alter things back to when they danced all night, Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September ? Or do they fancy there's really been no change, And they've always behaved as if they were crippled or tight, Or sat through days of thin continuous dreaming Watching light move ? If they don't (and they can't), it's strange: Why aren't they screaming ? At death, you break up: the bits that were you Start speeding away from each other for ever With no one to see. It's only oblivion, true: We had it before, but then it was going to end, And was all the time merging with a unique endeavour To bring to bloom the million-petalled flower Of being here. Next time you can't pretend There'll be anything else. And these are the first signs: Not knowing how, not hearing who, the power Of choosing gone. Their looks show that they're for it: Ash hair, toad hands, prune face dried into lines- How can they ignore it ? Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms Inside your head, and people in them, acting. People you know, yet can't quite name; each looms Like a deep loss restored, from known doors turning, Setting down a Iamp, smiling from a stair, extracting A known book from the shelves; or sometimes only The rooms themselves, chairs and a fire burning, The blown bush at the window, or the sun' s Faint friendliness on the wall some lonely Rain-ceased midsummer evening. That is where they live: Not here and now, but where all happened once. This is why they give An air of baffled absence, trying to be there Yet being here. For the rooms grow farther, leaving Incompetent cold, the constant wear and tear Of taken breath, and them crouching below Extinction' s alp, the old fools, never perceiving How near it is. This must be what keeps them quiet. The peak that stays in view wherever we go For them is rising ground. Can they never tell What is dragging them back, and how it will end ? Not at night? Not when the strangers come ? Never, throughout The whole hideous inverted childhood? Well, We shall find out.