English 1201 – Quotes from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”
1. Full of vexation come I, with complaint
Against my child, my daughter Hermia. (Act 1, Scene 1 – Egeus)
2. Ay me! for aught that I could ever read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth; (Act 1, Scene 1 - Lysander)
3. Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind: (Act 1, Scene 1 – Helena)
4. Apollo flies, and Daphne holds the chase; the dove pursues the griffin; the mild hind
makes speed to catch the tiger. (Act 1, Scene 1 – Helena)
5. But with thy brawls thou hast disturb'd our sport.
Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea
Contagious fogs; which falling in the land
Have every pelting river made so proud
That they have overborne their continents: (Act 2, Scene 1 – Titania)
6. Do you amend it then. It lies in you. Why should Titania cross her Oberon? I do but beg
a little changeling boy, to be my henchman (Act 2, Scene 1 – Oberon)
7. The juice of it, on sleeping eye-lids laid will make man or woman madly dote upon the
next live creature that it sees (Act 2, Scene 1 - Oberon)
8. Amen, amen, to that fair prayer, say I;
And then end life when I end loyalty! (Act 2, Scene 2 – Lysander)
9. Lysander, look how I do quake with fear:
Methought a serpent eat my heart away,
And you sat smiling at his cruel pray. (Act 2, Scene 2 – Hermia)
10. I see their knavery: this is to make an ass of me;
to fright me, if they could (Act 3, Scene 1 - Bottom)
11. What angel wakes me from my flowery bed (Act 3, Scene 1 – Titania)
12. Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful (Act 3, Scene 1 – Titania)
13. 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; (Act 3, Scene 1 – Bottom)
14. What love could press Lysander from my side (Act 3, Scene 2 – Hermia)
15. Shall we their fond pageant see?
Lord, what fools these mortals be! (Act 3, Scene 2 - Puck)
16. Now I perceive, they have conjoined all three, to fashion this false sport, in spite of me
(Act 3, Scene 2 - Helena)
17. Demetrius,
Who even but now did spurn me with his foot,
To call me goddess, nymph, divine and rare,
Precious, celestial? Wherefore speaks he this
To her he hates? (Act 3, Scene 2 – Helena)
18. O me! You juggler! You canker-blossom! You thief of love! What, have you come by
night and stolen my love’s heart from him (Act 3, Scene – Hermia)
19. My Oberon! What visions have I seen! Methought I was enamoured of an ass. (Act 4,
Scene 1 – Titania)
20. How came these things to pass? O, how mine eyes do loathe his visage now! (Act 4,
Scene 1 – Titania)
21. Come, my lord, and in our flight tell me how it came this night, that I sleeping here was
found with these mortals on the ground (Act 4, Scene 1 – Titania)
22. Enough, enough my lord. You have enough! I bet the law, the law upon his head! They
would have stolen away, Demetrius, thereby to have defeated you and me. You of your
wife, and me of my consent, of my consent that she should be thy wife. (Act 4, Scene 1 –
Egeus)
23. The object and the pleasure of mine eye is only Helena (Act 4, Scene 1 – Demetrius)
24. Egeus, I will overbear your will, for in the temple, by and by, with us, these couples shall
eternally be knit. (Act 4, Scene 1 – Theseus)
25. My love to Hermia,
Melted as the snow, seems to me now
As the remembrance of an idle gaud
Which in my childhood I did dote upon; (Act 4, Scene 1 – Demetrius)
26. These things seem small and undistinguishable, like far-off mountains turned into clouds
(Act 4, Scene 1 - Demetrius)
27. Are you sure that we are awake? It seems to me that yet we sleep, we dream (Act 4,
Scene 1 – Demetrius)
28. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to
say what dream it was: man is but an ass, if he go
about to expound this dream (Act 4, Scene 1 – Bottom)
29. Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends (Act 5, Scene 1 – Theseus)
30. One sees more devils than vast hell can hold (Act 5, Scene 1 - Theseus)