William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream

"HIPPOLYTABut all the story of the night told over,And all their minds transfigured so together,More witnesseth than fancy’s images And grows to something of great constancy,But, howsoever, strange and admirable."

"Lovers and madmen have such seething brains Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends."

"If there were a sympathy in choice,War, death, or sickness, did lay siege to it,Making it momentary as a sound,Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,Brief as the lightning in the collied night That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,And ere a man hath power to say 'Behold!'The jaws of darkness do devour it up;So quick bright things come to confusion."

"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine."

"O hell! to choose love by another's eye."

"I have had a most rare vision. 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. Methought I was--there is no man can tell what. Methought I was,--and methought I had,--but man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream: it shall be called Bottom's Dream, because it hath no bottom..."

"If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended,That you have but slumbered here While these visions did appear. And this weak and idle theme,No more yielding but a dream,Gentles, do not reprehend:If you pardon, we will mend:And, as I am an honest Puck,If we have unearned luck Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,We will make amends ere long;Else the Puck a liar call;So, good night unto you all. Give me your hands, if we be friends,And Robin shall restore amends."

"Four days will quickly steep themselves in nights Four nights will quickly dream away the time."

"Why should you think that I should woo in scorn?Scorn and derision never come in tears:Look, when I vow, I weep; and vows so born, In their nativity all truth appears. How can these things in me seem scorn to you,Bearing the badge of faith, to prove them true?"

"My soul is in the sky."

"I’ll follow thee and make a heaven of hell,To die upon the hand I love so well."

"Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover and the poet Are of imagination all compact:One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name."

"And yet,to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays."

"The course of true love never did run smooth."

"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind."