A Midsummer Night's Dream Famous Quotes

The course of true love never did run smooth.

Lysander to Hermia in Act 1, Scene 1, after they learn her father will have her executed or sent to a convent for refusing to marry Demetrius — sympathy mixed with an accurate forecast of what is about to happen to them.

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

Puck watching the four lovers in their enchanted confusion in Act 3, Scene 2 — the play's most quoted line, delivered by a fairy amused rather than distressed by human chaos.

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows.

Oberon describing to Puck in Act 2, Scene 1 where Titania sleeps — the location he plans to enchant her at. The speech is the play's most purely beautiful piece of description.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind.

Helena in Act 1, Scene 1, trying to understand why Demetrius loves Hermia and not her — she is making a philosophical point about the irrational nature of attraction, which the rest of the play tests to destruction.

Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.

Oberon's opening to Titania in Act 2, Scene 1 — five words that establish everything about their relationship: they are equals, they are fighting, and the night is their medium.

I am that merry wanderer of the night.

Puck introducing himself to a fairy in Act 2, Scene 1 — he goes by Robin Goodfellow, a folk spirit who plays tricks on sleeping humans. The 'merry' is genuine, which makes him more unsettling.

I'll put a girdle round about the earth In forty minutes.

Puck promising Oberon he will fetch the magic flower in Act 2, Scene 1 — casual boasting about crossing the entire globe in less than an hour, delivered like a minor errand.

The lunatic, the lover and the poet Are of imagination all compact.

Theseus dismissing the lovers' stories in Act 5, Scene 1 as the products of overheated imaginations — putting madmen, lovers, and poets in the same category. The audience knows he is wrong, and that is the joke.

So quick bright things come to confusion.

Lysander consoling Hermia in Act 1, Scene 1, listing all the ways love goes wrong — war, death, sickness, mismatch — before landing on this. The line works as prophecy and as general truth.

What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?

Titania waking in Act 3, Scene 1 to find Bottom (now wearing a donkey's head) singing nearby — the magic makes her see an angel where the play has given us a tradesman with an ass's head.

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

Helena chasing Demetrius into the wood in Act 2, Scene 1 after he has explicitly told her he does not want her company — she knows this is undignified and goes anyway.

Reason and love keep little company together now-a-days; the more the pity that some honest neighbours will not make them friends.

Bottom on reason and love not keeping company in Act 3, Scene 1 — the weaver turned philosopher, delivered with complete confidence by a man who cannot see his own transformed head.

If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumber'd here.

Puck's closing address to the audience in Act 5, Scene 1 — he offers them a way out: call it all a dream. It is the play's final and most elegant piece of misdirection.

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.

Bottom waking alone in Act 4, Scene 1, trying to describe his night with Titania — he mangles the senses from 1 Corinthians into comic chaos, which is also the only honest response to the inexpressible.

Over hill, over dale, Thorough bush, thorough brier, Over park, over pale, Thorough flood, thorough fire.

A fairy describing Titania's service in Act 2, Scene 1 — one of the play's fairy songs, moving through every kind of terrain at speed, mapping a world where physical obstacles do not apply.