The Merchant of Venice quotes

Enter Antonio, Salarino, and Salanio.

In sooth, I know not why I am so sad:

It wearies me; you say it wearies you; But how I caught it, found it, or came by it, What stuff ’tis made of, whereof it is born, I am to learn;

You look not well, Signior Antonio; You have too much respect upon the world: They lose it that do buy it with much care: Believe me, you are marvellously changed.

I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano; A stage where every man must play a part, And mine a sad one.

Let me play the fool: With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come, And let my liver rather heat with wine Than my heart cool with mortifying groans. Why should a man, whose blood is warm within, Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster?

Is that any thing now?

Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice.

His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you have them, they are not worth the search.

Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice.

His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you have them, they are not worth the search.

Well, tell me now what lady is the same To whom you swore a secret pilgrimage, That you to-day promised to tell me of?

Belmont. A room in Portia’s house.

By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is aweary of this great world.

You would be, sweet madam, if your miseries were in the same abundance as your good fortunes are: and yet, for aught I see, they are as sick that surfeit with too much as they that starve with nothing.

They would be better, if well followed.

If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces.

It is a good divine that follows his own instructions: I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.

It is a good divine that follows his own instructions: I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.

The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps o’er a cold decree

: such a hare is madness the youth, to skip o’er the meshes of good counsel the cripple. But this reasoning is not in the fashion to choose me a husband. O me, the word “choose!”

How say you by the French lord, Monsieur Le Bon?

God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man.

In truth, I know it is a sin to be a mocker: but, he! why, he hath a horse better than the Neapolitan’s, a better bad habit of frowning than the Count Palatine; he is every man in no man;

Mark you this, Bassanio, The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. An evil soul producing holy witness Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,

A goodly apple rotten at the heart: O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

Three thousand ducats; ’tis a good round sum. Three months from twelve; then, let me see; the rate—

Mark you this, Bassanio,

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.

An evil soul producing holy witness Is like a villain with a smiling cheek, A goodly apple rotten at the heart: O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

drones hive not with me; Therefore I part with him, and part with him To one that would have him help to waste His borrow’d purse. Well, Jessica, go in; Perhaps I will return immediately: Do as I bid you; shut doors after you:

Fast bind, fast find; A proverb never stale in thrifty mind.

Exit.

That ever holds: who riseth from a feast With that keen appetite that he sits down? Where is the horse that doth untread again His tedious measures with the unbated fire That he did pace them first?

All things that are, Are with more spirit chased than enjoy’d.

How like a younker or a prodigal The scarfed bark puts from her native bay, Hugg’d and embraced by the strumpet wind! How like the prodigal doth she return, With over-weather’d ribs and ragged sails, Lean, rent and beggar’d by the strumpet wind!

Here, catch this casket; it is worth the pains. I am glad ’tis night, you do not look on me, For I am much ashamed of my exchange:

But love is blind and lovers cannot see The pretty follies that themselves commit;

For if they could, Cupid himself would blush To see me thus transformed to a boy.

you are sped. Still more fool I shall appear By the time I linger here With one fool’s head I came to woo, But I go away with two. Sweet, adieu. I’ll keep my oath, Patiently to bear my wroth. Exeunt Arragon and train.

Thus hath the candle singed the moth.

O, these deliberate fools! when they do choose, They have the wisdom by their wit to lose.

The ancient saying is no heresy,

Hanging and wiving goes by destiny.

Come, draw the curtain, Nerissa.

He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what’s his reason? I am a Jew.

Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?

fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?

hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is?

If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge.

If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge.

The villany you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.

Gentlemen, my master Antonio is at his house and desires to speak with you both.

Out upon her! Thou torturest me, Tubal: it was my turquoise; I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor:

I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys.

But Antonio is certainly undone.

How begot, how nourished? Reply, reply. It is engender’d in the eyes, With gazing fed; and fancy dies In the cradle where it lies. Let us all ring fancy’s knell I’ll begin it,—Ding, dong, bell.

So may the outward shows be least themselves: The world is still deceived with ornament.

In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt, But, being seasoned with a gracious voice, Obscures the show of evil? In religion, What damned error, but some sober brow Will bless it and approve it with a text, Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?

So are those crisped snaky golden locks Which make such wanton gambols with the wind, Upon supposed fairness, often known To be the dowry of a second head, The skull that bred them in the sepulchre.

Thus ornament is but the guiled shore To a most dangerous sea

; the beauteous scarf Veiling an Indian beauty; in a word, The seeming truth which cunning times put on To entrap the wisest. Therefore, thou gaudy gold, Hard food for Midas, I will none of thee;

On what compulsion must I? tell me that.

The quality of mercy is not strain’d, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: ’Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown;

The quality of mercy is not strain’d, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:

’Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown; His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; But mercy is above this sceptred sway;

His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; But mercy is above this sceptred sway; It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself;

And earthly power doth then show likest God’s When mercy seasons justice.

Therefore, Jew, Though justice be thy plea, consider this, That, in the course of justice, none of us Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy; And that same prayer doth teach us all to render The deeds of mercy.

Sweet soul, let’s in, and there expect their coming. And yet no matter: why should we go in? My friend Stephano, signify, I pray you, Within the house, your mistress is at hand; And bring your music forth into the air. Exit Stephano.

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!

Here will we sit and let the sounds of music Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night Become the touches of sweet harmony. Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:

therefore the poet Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods; Since nought so stockish, hard and full of rage, But music for the time doth change his nature.

The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;

The motions of his spirit are dull as night And his affections dark as Erebus: Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.

That light we see is burning in my hall. How far that little candle throws his beams!

So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

When the moon shone, we did not see the candle.

It is your music, madam, of the house.

Nothing is good, I see, without respect:

Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day.

The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark, When neither is attended, and I think The nightingale, if she should sing by day, When every goose is cackling, would be thought No better a musician than the wren.

How many things by season season’d are To their right praise and true perfection!

Peace, ho! the moon sleeps with Endymion And would not be awaked. Music ceases.

We should hold day with the Antipodes, If you would walk in absence of the sun.

Let me give light, but let me not be light; For a light wife doth make a heavy husband,

And never be Bassanio so for me: But God sort all! You are welcome home, my lord.