Twelfth Night Famous Quotes

If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die.

Orsino opening the play in Act 1, Scene 1, wallowing in his own lovesickness for Olivia — his plan is to overdose on music until he falls out of love. He does not fall out of love with music or with feeling.

She never told her love, But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, Feed on her damask cheek.

Viola (as Cesario) describing a fictional sister to Orsino in Act 2, Scene 4, while in fact describing herself — she is in love with Orsino, cannot say so, and uses the image of hidden feeling eating a flower from the inside.

I am not what I am.

Viola to Olivia in Act 3, Scene 1 — she is dressed as a man, in love with her employer, delivering love messages to a woman who has fallen in love with her. The line is both a fact and an understatement.

Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?

Sir Toby to Malvolio in Act 2, Scene 3, after Malvolio tries to quiet their late-night revels — the steward's disapproval of pleasure is the target, and Sir Toby lands the play's clearest punch at sanctimony.

Make me a willow cabin at your gate, And call upon my soul within the house.

Viola (as Cesario) describing to Olivia in Act 1, Scene 5 what she would do if she were in love with her — the speech is simultaneously the most convincing declaration of love in the play and one she is delivering on someone else's behalf.

Love sought is good, but given unsought better.

Olivia in Act 3, Scene 1, confessing her love to Viola (dressed as Cesario) — she means she was not looking for love and yet here it is, which she reads as the best kind. Her love, like everyone else's, is aimed at the wrong person.

Journeys end in lovers meeting, Every wise man's son doth know.

Feste's song in Act 2, Scene 3 at the late-night revels — the lyric is a folk-proverb set to music, but in a play where journeys keep ending in mistaken identities rather than settled love, it reads as wishful.

Come away, come away, death, And in sad cypress let me be laid.

Feste's song for Orsino in Act 2, Scene 4 — a song about dying of unrequited love, requested by a man who enjoys the performance of his own suffering. Viola listens and has reason to feel it more genuinely.

Thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.

Feste to the humiliated Malvolio in Act 5, Scene 1 — a whirligig is a spinning top, and Feste's point is that time spins, and what goes up comes down. It is the closest the play gets to a moral.

What is love? 'tis not hereafter; Present mirth hath present laughter; What's to come is still unsure.

Feste's song at the midnight revels in Act 2, Scene 3 — a carpe diem argument set to music, proposing that love is now or never. Sir Toby and Sir Andrew use it as a licence to keep drinking.

If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.

Fabian watching Malvolio in Act 3, Scene 4, cross-gartered and smiling at Olivia — the observation that the scene seems too far-fetched for theatre is delivered from inside a play, which makes it a joke the audience alone can fully enjoy.

One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons, A natural perspective, that is and is not!

Orsino in Act 5, Scene 1, seeing Sebastian and Viola together for the first time and not yet understanding what he is looking at — a 'natural perspective' is an optical illusion made without a glass.

Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage.

Feste to Maria in Act 1, Scene 5, before he faces Olivia's anger for going absent — the line scrambles the proverb 'many a good marriage prevents a bad hanging', which is itself dark enough.

Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em.

Malvolio reading the forged letter's instruction in Act 2, Scene 5 — the phrase works as genuine encouragement, which is why it endures, even though here it is being deployed to humiliate a pompous man.