| “Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs; / Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes; / Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers’ tears. / What is it else? A madness most discreet, / A choking gall and a preserving sweet.” | Romeo-metaphor-paradox |
| “I fear, too early; for my mind misgives / Some consequence, yet hanging in the stars, / Shall bitterly begin his fearful date / With this night’s revels and expire the term / Of a despised life, closed in my breast, / By some vile forfeit of untimely death.” | Romeo-foreshadowing |
| “O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright! / It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night / Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear — / Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear! / So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows / As yonder lady o’er her fellows shows. / The measure done, I’ll watch her place of stand / And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand. / Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! / For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.” | Romeo-simile |
| “My only love, sprung from my only hate! / Too early seen unknown, and known too late! / Prodigious birth of love it is to me / That I must love a loathed enemy.” | Juliet-paradox |
| “If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark.” | Mercutio- |
| “But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? / It is the East and Juliet is the sun…Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven, / Having some business, do entreat her eyes / To twinkle in their spheres till they return. / What if her eyes were there, they in her head? / The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars / As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven / Would through the airy region stream so bright / That birds would sing and think it were not night…” | Romeo-Metaphor |
| “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? / Deny thy father and refuse thy name…’Tis but thy name that is my enemy. / Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. / What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, / Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part / Belonging to a man. O be some other name! / What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet.” | Juliet-metaphor |
| “Although I joy in thee, / I have no joy of this contract tonight. / It is too rash, to unadvised, to sudden; / Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be / Ere one can say ‘It lightens.'” | Juliet-foreshadowing |
| “Two such opposed kings encamp them still / In man as well as herbs – grace and rude will; / And where the worser is predominant, / Full soon the canker death eats up that plant” | Friar Lawrence-paradox |
| “Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow / That I shall say good night till it be morrow.” | Juliet-oxymoron |
| “These violent delights have violent ends / And in their triump die, like fire and powder, / Which, as they kiss, consume. The sweetest honey / Is loathsome in his own deliciousness / And in the taste confounds the appetite. / Therefore love moderately: long love doth so; / Too swift arrive as tardy as too slow.” | Friar Lawrence- foreshadowing |
| “The love I bear thee can afford / No better term than this: thou art a villain” | Tybalt- |
| “A plague o’ both your houses! / They have made worms’ meat of me.” | Mercutio-foreshadowing |
| “O, I am fortune’s fool!” | Romeo-foreshadowing |
| “Give me my Romeo; and when he shall die, / Take him and cut him out in little stars / And he will make the face of heaven so fine / That all the world will be in love with night / And pay no worship to the garish sun” | Juliet-metaphor |
| “Thy noble shape is but a form of wax, / Digressing from the valor of a man;” | friar Lawrence-metaphor |
| “Death is my son-in-law, Death is my heir; / My daughter he hath wedded. I will die / And leave him all. Life, living, all is Death’s” | Lord Capulet-personification |
| “Sweet flower, with flowers thy bridal bed I strew / (O woe! Thy canopy is dust and stones) / Which with sweet water nightly I will dew… | Paris-metaphor |
| “O happy dagger! / This is thy sheath; there rust , and let me die” | Juliet-oxymoron |
| “For I will raise her statue in pure gold, / That whiles Verona by that name is known, / There shall no figure at such rate be set / As that of true and faithful Juliet” | Lord Montague-plot development |
| “A glooming peace this morning with it brings / The sun for sorrow will not show his head … / For never was a story of more woe / Than this of Juliet and her Romeo” | Prince Escalus-plot development |
Quotes from Romeo and Juliet with their figurative language
September 9, 2019