"Much Ado About Nothing"

Much Ado About Nothing is a play of comic capers with a touch of romance. The romantic interludes between the main characters of the play, Claudio and Hero, are offset by the love-hate relationship between the other pair, Beatrice and Benedick. Claudio and Hero struggle for their union, while Beatrice and Benedick get into intellectual brawls. Here's a collection of quick-witted quotes from one of Shakespeare's best-loved comedies.

Act One

Scene One

• He is of a very melancholy disposition.
• He wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat.
• Shall I never see a bachelor of threescore again?
• Benedick the married man.
• A very valiant trencher-man.

Act Two

Scene One

• He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man.
• Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy, if I could say how much.
• What, my dear Lady Disdain! Are you yet living?
• I have a good eye, uncle; I can see a church by day-light.
• As merry as the day is long.

Scene Three

• Lie ten nights awake, carving the fashion of a new doublet. He was wont to speak plain and to the purpose.
• Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
  Men were deceivers ever,
  One foot in sea and one on shore,
  To one thing constant never.
• Sits the wind in that corner?

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'Much Ado About Nothing' Quotes

By Esther Lombardi

Act Three

Scene Two

• Every one can master a grief but he that has it.
• From the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, he is all mirth.

Scene Three

• I thank God I am as honest as any man living that is an old man and no honester than I.
• To be a well-favoured man is the gift of fortune; but to write and read comes by nature.
• If they make you not then the better answer, you may say they are not the men you took them for.
• You shall comprehend all vagrom men.
• The most peaceable way for you if you do take a thief, is to let him show himself what he is and steal out of your company.
• Shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets of the brain awe a man from the career of his humour? No, the world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.
• I know that Deformed.
• Are you good men and true?

Scene Five

• A good old man, sir; he will be talking: as they say, When the age is in the wit is out.
• If I were as tedious as a king, I could find it in my heart to bestow it all of your worship.

Act Four

Scene One

• O, what authority and show of truth / Can cunning sin cover itself withal!
• O, what men dare do! what men may do! what men daily do, not knowing what they do!

Scene Two

• A fellow that hath had losses, and one that hath two gowns and every thing handsome about him.
• Flat burglary as ever was committed.
• Condemned into everlasting redemption.
• O, that he were here to write me down an ass!
• Masters, it is proved already that you are little better than false knaves; and it will go near to be thought so shortly.
• The eftest way.

Act Five

Scene One

• Men can counsel and speak comfort to that grief / Which they themselves not feel.
• Charm ache with air, and agony with words.
• He hath indeed better bettered expectation.
• For there was never yet philosopher / That could endure the toothache patiently.
• Patch grief with proverbs.

Scene Two

• I was not born under a rhyming planet.

Scene Three

• Done to death by slanderous tongues.