The Merry Wives of Windsor/Quotes

Act I

 * I will make a Star Chamber matter of it.
 * Shallow, scene i


 * All his successors, gone before him, have done’t; and all his ancestors, that come after him, may.
 * Slender, scene i


 * It is a familiar beast to man, and signifies love.
 * Evans, scene i


 * Seven hundred pounds, and possibilities, is good gifts.
 * Evans, scene i


 * Mine host of the Garter.
 * Evans, scene i


 * I had rather than forty shillings I had my book of Songs and Sonnets here.
 * Slender, scene i


 * If there be no great love in the beginning, yet heaven may decrease it upon better acquaintance, when we are married and have more occasion to know one another: I hope, upon familiarity will grow more contempt.
 * Slender, scene i


 * O base Gongarian wight! wilt thou the spigot wield?
 * Pistol, scene iii


 * Convey, the wise it call: steal! foh; a fico for the phrase!
 * Pistol, scene iii


 * Bear you these letters tightly; Sail like my pinnace to these golden shores.
 * Falstaff, scene iii


 * Tester I’ll have in pouch, when thou shalt lack, Base Phrygian Turk!
 * Pistol, scene iii


 * Thou art the Mars of malcontents.
 * Pistol, scene iii


 * Here will be an old abusing of God's patience, and the King's English.
 * Mistress Quickly, scene iv

Act II

 * We burn day-light.
 * Mistress Ford, scene i


 * I love not the humour of bread and cheese; and there’s the humour of it.
 * Nym, scene i


 * 'Faith, thou hast some crotchets in thy head now.
 * Mistress Ford, scene i


 * Why, then the world's mine oyster, Which I with sword will open.
 * Pistol, scene ii


 * This is the short and the long of it.
 * Mistress Quickly, scene ii


 * I have pursued her, as love hath pursued me; which hath been, on the wing of all occasions. But whatsoever I have merited, either in my mind, or in my means, meed, I am sure, I have received none, unless experience be a jewel.
 * Ford, scene ii


 * Falstaff: Of what quality was your love then? Ford: Like a fair house, built on another man’s ground.
 * scene ii


 * We have some salt of our youth in us.
 * Shallow, scene iii

Act III

 * Your hearts are mighty, your skins are whole.
 * Host, scene i


 * I cannot tell what the dickens his name is.
 * Mistress Page, scene ii


 * What a taking was he in, when your husband asked what was in the basket!
 * Mistress Page, scene iii


 * O, what a world of vile ill-favour’d faults Looks handsome in three hundred pounds a-year!
 * Anne Page, scene iv


 * Happy man be his dole!
 * Slender, scene iv


 * You may know by my size, that I have a kind of alacrity in sinking.
 * Falstaff, scene v


 * As good luck would have it.
 * Falstaff, scene v


 * The rankest compound of villainous smell, that ever offended nostril.
 * Falstaff, scene v


 * A man of my kidney.
 * Falstaff, scene v


 * Think of that, master Brook.
 * Falstaff, scene v

Act IV

 * Why, woman, your husband is in his old lunes again; he so takes on yonder with my husband; so rails against all married mankind; so curses all Eve’s daughters, of what complexion soever.
 * Mistress Page, scene ii

Act V

 * This is the third time; I hope good luck lies in odd numbers. Away, go; they say, there is divinity in odd numbers, either in nativity, chance, or death.
 * Falstaff, scene i
 * Compare: "God delights in an odd number." (Numero deus impare gaudet.) Virgil, Eclogues, viii, 75.