Category: Much Ado About Nothing

Don Pedro: Your silence most offends me, and to be merry best becomes you; for, out of question, you were born in a merry hour.
Beatrice: No, sure, my lord, my mother cried; but then there was a star danced, and under that was I born.

Leonato: O Lord, my lord, if they were but a week married, they would talk themselves mad.

Beatrice: You always end with a jade’s trick. I know you of old.

Benedick: I may chance have some odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me, because I have railed so long against marriage: but doth not the appetite alter? a man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age.

Benedick: I would my horse had the speed of your tongue.

Benedick: for I will be horribly in love with her.

Benedick: The world must be peopled!

BENEDICK: Would you buy her, that you inquire after her?
CLAUDIO: Can the world buy such a jewel?
BENEDICK: Yea, and a case to put it into.

Don Pedro: I shall see thee, ere I die, look pale with love.
Benedick: With anger, with sickness, or with hunger, my lord. Not with love.

CLAUDIO: In mine eye she is the sweetest lady that ever I looked on.

Don Pedro: Will you have me, lady?
Beatrice: No, my lord, unless I might have another for working days. Your grace is too costly to wear everyday.

BENEDICK: Is’t come to this? In faith, hath not the world one man but he will wear his cap with suspicion? Shall I never see a bachelor of three-score again?

BEATRICE: No, not till a hot January.

Beatrice:
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more.
Men were deceivers ever.
One foot in sea and one on shore,
to one thing constant never.
Then sigh not so but let them go
and be you blithe and bonny,
converting all your sounds of woe
into hey nonny nonny.

BENEDICK: What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living?
BEATRICE: Is it possible disdain should die while she hath such meet food to feed it as Signior Benedick? Courtesy itself must convert to disdain, if you come in her presence.

Beatrice: Against my will, I am sent to bid you come into dinner.
Benedick: Fair Beatrice, thank you for your pains.
Beatrice: I took no more pains for those thanks than you take pains to thank me. If it had been painful, I would not have come.
Benedick: You take pleasure then in the message?
Beatrice: Yea, just so much as you may take upon a knife’s point. You have no stomach, signor? Fare you well.
Benedick: Ha! “Against my will I am sent to bid you come into dinner.” There’s a double meaning in that.

BENEDICK: Why, i’ faith, methinks she’s too low for a high praise, too brown for a fair praise and too little for a great praise: only this commendation I can afford her, that were she other than she is, she were unhandsome; and being no other but as she is, I do not like her.

Beatrice: I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me.

BENEDICK: That a woman conceived me, I thank her; that she brought me up, I likewise give her most humble thanks: but that I will have a recheat winded in my forehead, or hang my bugle in an invisible baldrick, all women shall pardon me.

Dogberry: Thou wilt be condemned into everlasting redemption for this.

Don Pedro: Good Signior Leonato, you are come to meet your trouble: the fashion of the world is to avoid cost, and you encounter it.
Leonato: Never came trouble to my house in the likeness of your grace: for trouble being gone, comfort should remain; but when you depart from me, sorrow abides and happiness takes his leave.

Claudio: Lady, as you are mine, I am yours.

Beatrice: I have a good eye, uncle; I can see a church by daylight.

Don Pedro: Come, lady, come; you have lost the heart of Signior Benedick.
Beatrice: Indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile; and I gave him use for it, a double heart for his single one: marry, once before he won it of me with false dice, therefore your grace may well say I have lost it.
Don Pedro: You have put him down, lady, you have put him down.