Troilus and Cressida Famous Quotes

Take but degree away, untune that string, And, hark, what discord follows!

Ulysses in Act 1, Scene 3, diagnosing the Greek military failure as a breakdown of hierarchy — 'degree' is the system of rank and order that keeps an army (and a state) functioning. The lute string image makes the argument sensory: remove one string, everything sounds wrong.

O, when degree is shaked, Which is the ladder to all high designs, Then enterprise is sick!

Ulysses continuing his degree speech in Act 1, Scene 3 — the 'ladder to all high designs' is his image for how ambition climbs within a functioning order. Remove the order and the ladder collapses.

Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, Wherein he puts alms for oblivion.

Ulysses to Achilles in Act 3, Scene 3, explaining why past achievement means nothing — time carries a beggar's bag full of forgotten glories, and Achilles's reputation will join them if he does nothing now.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

Ulysses in Act 3, Scene 3 — the meaning is often reversed in quotation. Ulysses is saying that everyone instinctively chases novelty, not that everyone shares a common humanity. The 'touch of nature' is a weakness, not a virtue.

O, let not virtue seek Remuneration for the thing it was; For beauty, wit, High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service, Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all To envious and calumniating time.

Ulysses in Act 3, Scene 3 continuing his assault on the idea that past virtue earns future reward — everything on his list (beauty, love, service) is subject to time's erosion. The speech is Ulysses at his most despairing and most honest.

Time is like a fashionable host That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand, And with his arms outstretch'd, as he would fly, Grasps in the comer.

Ulysses in Act 3, Scene 3, extending his time argument with a social image — the host who dismisses you on your way out and greets the arriving guest with open arms is exactly how public memory and attention work.

The common curse of mankind, folly and ignorance, be thine in great revenue!

Thersites cursing Ajax in Act 2, Scene 3 — his curse is that Ajax should have more of what he already has (folly and ignorance). The twist makes it funnier and sharper than a standard insult.

Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart.

Troilus in Act 5, Scene 3, tearing up Cressida's letter — he has watched her with Diomedes and cannot reconcile what he saw with what she wrote. The dismissal of words is written in words, which the play is aware of.

O madness of discourse, That cause sets up with and against itself!

Troilus in Act 5, Scene 2, watching Cressida and Diomedes — his mind is trying to hold two contradictory facts (she is faithful; she is not faithful) and finding they cannot coexist. The 'madness of discourse' is his name for the state of cognitive collapse.

The end crowns all, And that old common arbitrator, Time, Will one day end it.

Hector in Act 4, Scene 5, during the truce — the phrase is a common proverb in Shakespeare's time, but Hector's use of it has particular irony: he is the character whose end (his death) does not crown anything, because the war continues.

I have a kind of self resides with you; But an unkind self, that itself will leave, To be another's fool.

Cressida to Troilus in Act 3, Scene 2 — she is describing how part of herself already belongs to him and a separate self is watching that self make a fool of it. The split consciousness is unusually exact about how love-sickness feels.

How my achievements mock me!

Troilus in Act 4, Scene 2, just after reaching Cressida and just before losing her — the line compresses the entire Petrarchan quest into one moment of irony: achieving the goal reveals it cannot be held.

I know what 'tis to love.

Paris in Act 4, Scene 3, to Troilus — the shortest possible claim and the most loaded in the play. Paris started the war by taking Helen; his authority on love is also his culpability for everyone's suffering.

Here is such patchery, such juggling and such knavery! all the argument is a cuckold and a whore.

Thersites's summary of the Trojan War in Act 2, Scene 3 — the whole conflict reduced to Menelaus's domestic embarrassment and Helen's sexual betrayal. It is reductive and, by the play's own logic, largely correct.

Those wounds heal ill that men do give themselves: Omission to do what is necessary Seals a commission to a blank of danger.

Ulysses to Achilles in Act 3, Scene 3, arguing that inaction is its own wound — choosing not to act is not neutrality but a positive choice that creates its own consequences.