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.