William Shakespeare 1564-1616 Twelfth Night John Bartlett 1919 Familiar Quotations


1
If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die. That strain again! it had a dying fall: O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound 1 That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour!
Twelfth Night. Act i. Sc. 1.
2
I am sure care ’s an enemy to life.
Twelfth Night. Act i. Sc. 3.
3
At my fingers’ ends. 2
Twelfth Night. Act i. Sc. 3.
4
Wherefore are these things hid?
Twelfth Night. Act i. Sc. 3.
5
Is it a world to hide virtues in?
Twelfth Night. Act i. Sc. 3.
6
One draught above heat makes him a fool; the second mads him; and a third drowns him.
Twelfth Night. Act i. Sc. 5.
7
We will draw the curtain and show you the picture.
Twelfth Night. Act i. Sc. 5.
8
’T is beauty truly blent, whose red and white Nature’s own sweet and cunning hand laid on: Lady, you are the cruell’st she alive If you will lead these graces to the grave And leave the world no copy.
Twelfth Night. Act i. Sc. 5.
9
Halloo your name to the reverberate hills, And make the babbling gossip of the air Cry out.
Twelfth Night. Act i. Sc. 5.
10
Journeys end in lovers meeting, Every wise man’s son doth know.
Twelfth Night. Act ii. Sc. 3.



11
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty.
Twelfth Night. Act ii. Sc. 3.
12
He does it with a better grace, but I do it more natural.
Twelfth Night. Act ii. Sc. 3.
13
Is there no respect of place, persons, nor time in you?
Twelfth Night. Act ii. Sc. 3.
14
Sir To. Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale? Clo. Yes, by Saint Anne, and ginger shall be hot i’ the mouth too.
Twelfth Night. Act ii. Sc. 3.
15
My purpose is, indeed, a horse of that colour.
Twelfth Night. Act ii. Sc. 3.
16
These most brisk and giddy-paced times.
Twelfth Night. Act ii. Sc. 4.
17
Let still the woman take An elder than herself: so wears she to him, So sways she level in her husband’s heart: For, boy, however we do praise ourselves, Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn, Than women’s are.
Twelfth Night. Act ii. Sc. 4.
18
Then let thy love be younger than thyself, Or thy affection cannot hold the bent.
Twelfth Night. Act ii. Sc. 4.
19
The spinsters and the knitters in the sun And the free maids that weave their thread with bones Do use to chant it: it is silly sooth, And dallies with the innocence of love, Like the old age.
Twelfth Night. Act ii. Sc. 4.
20
Duke. And what ’s her history? Vio. A blank, my lord. She never told her love, But let concealment, like a worm i’ the bud, Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought, And with a green and yellow melancholy She sat like patience on a monument, Smiling at grief.
Twelfth Night. Act ii. Sc. 4.
21
I am all the daughters of my father’s house, And all the brothers too.
Twelfth Night. Act ii. Sc. 4.
22
An you had any eye behind you, you might see more detraction at your heels than fortunes before you.
Twelfth Night. Act ii. Sc. 5.
23
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.
Twelfth Night. Act ii. Sc. 5.
24
Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun; it shines everywhere.
Twelfth Night. Act iii. Sc. 1.
25
Oh, what a deal of scorn looks beautiful In the contempt and anger of his lip!
Twelfth Night. Act iii. Sc. 1.
26
Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.
Twelfth Night. Act iii. Sc. 1.
27
Let there be gall enough in thy ink; though thou write with a goose-pen, no matter.
Twelfth Night. Act iii. Sc. 2.
28
I think we do know the sweet Roman hand.
Twelfth Night. Act iii. Sc. 4.
29
Put thyself into the trick of singularity.
Twelfth Night. Act iii. Sc. 4.
30
’T is not for gravity to play at cherry-pit with Satan.
Twelfth Night. Act iii. Sc. 4.
31
This is very midsummer madness.
Twelfth Night. Act iii. Sc. 4.
32
What, man! defy the Devil: consider, he is an enemy to mankind.
Twelfth Night. Act iii. Sc. 4.
33
If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.
Twelfth Night. Act iii. Sc. 4.
34
More matter for a May morning.
Twelfth Night. Act iii. Sc. 4.
35
Still you keep o’ the windy side of the law.
Twelfth Night. Act iii. Sc. 4.
36
An I thought he had been valiant and so cunning in fence, I ’ld have seen him damned ere I’ ld have challenged him.
Twelfth Night. Act iii. Sc. 4. 3
37
Out of my lean and low ability I ’ll lend you something.
Twelfth Night. Act iii. Sc. 4. 4
38
Out of the jaws of death. 5
Twelfth Night. Act iii. Sc. 4. 6
39
As the old hermit of Prague, that never saw pen and ink, very wittily said to a niece of King Gorboduc, That that is, is.
Twelfth Night. Act iv. Sc. 2.
40
Clo. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl? Mal. That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird.
Twelfth Night. Act iv. Sc. 2.
41
Thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.
Twelfth Night. Act v. Sc. 1.
42
For the rain it raineth every day.
Twelfth Night. Act v. Sc. 1.

Note 1.
”Like the sweet south” in Dyce and Singer. This change was made at the suggestion of Pope. [back]

Note 2.
See Heywood, Quotation 34. [back]

Note 3.
Act iii. Sc. 5 in Dyce. [back]

Note 4.
Act iii. Sc. 5 in Dyce. [back]

Note 5.
Into the jaws of death.—Alfred Tennyson: The Charge of the Light Brigade, stanza 3.

In the jaws of death.—Du Bartas: Divine Weekes and Workes, second week, first day, part iv. [back]

Note 6.
Act iii. Sc. 5 in Dyce. [back]

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