“A victory is twice itself when the achiever brings home full numbers.”
“There is a kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and her; they never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit between them.”
“Shall I never see a bachelor of threescore again?”
“Well, as time shall try: ‘In time the savage bull doth bear the yoke.’”
“I cannot be said to be a flattering honest man, it must not be denied but I am a plain-dealing villain.”
“He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man; and he that is more than a youth is not for me; and he that is less than a man, I am not for him.”
“Speak low, if you speak love.”
“Friendship is constant in all other things
Save in the office and affairs of love:
therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues;
Let every eye negotiate for itself
And trust no agent; for beauty is a witch
Against whose charms faith melteth into blood.”
“Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy, if I could say how much.”
“One woman is fair, yet I am well; another is wise, yet I am well; another virtuous, yet I am well; but till all graces be in one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace.”
“Note this before my notes; There’s not a note of mine that’s worth the noting.”
“…of this matter
Is little Cupid’s crafty arrow made,
That only wounds by hearsay.”
“Well, every one can master a grief but he that has it.”
“Even she: Leonato’s Hero, your Hero, every man’s Hero.”
“I think they that touch pitch will be defiled.”
“Seest thou not, I say, what a deformed thief this fashion is? how giddily he turns about all the hot bloods between fourteen and five-and-thirty?”
“Oh what men dare do! what men may do! what men daily do, not knowing what they do!”
“There is not chastity enough in language
Without offence to utter them.”
“But mine , and mine I lov'd , and mine I prais'd,
And mine that I was proud on, mine so much
That I myself was to myself not mine,
Valuing of her; why, she— O! she is fallen Into a pit of ink…”
“O! that I were a man for his sake, or that I had any friend would be a man for my sake! But manhood is melted into courtesies, valour into compliment, and men are only turned into tongue, and trim ones too: he is now as valiant as Hercules, that only tells a lie and swears it. I cannot be a man with wishing, therefore I will die a woman with grieving.”
“O that he were here to write me down an ass! but, masters, remember that I am an ass; though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass.”
“Charm ache with air and agony with words.”
“For there was never yet philosopher
That could endure the toothache patiently,
However they have writ the style of gods
And made a push at chance and sufferance.”
“I was not born under a rhyming planet.”
“…get thee a wife, get thee a wife: there is no staff more reverent than one tipped with horn.”