| “What’s past is prologue.” | Antonio |
| “We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.” | Prospero |
| “O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in’t!” | Miranda |
| “Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.Sometimes a thousand twangling instrumentsWill hum about mine ears; and sometime voices, That, if I then had waked after long sleep,Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,The clouds methought would open, and show richesReady to drop upon me; that, when I waked, I cried to dream again.” | Caliban |
| “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.” | Trinculo |
| “This thing of darkness IAcknowledge mine.” | Prospero |
| “You taught me language, and my profit on’t / Is, I know how to curse” | Caliban |
| “I’ll break my staff, bury it certain fathoms in the earth, and deeper than did ever plummet sound, I’ll drown my book!” | Prospero |
| “Your tale, sir, would cure deafness.” | Miranda |
| “Full fathom five thy father lies;Of his bones are coral made;Those are pearls that were his eyes:Nothing of him that doth fade,But doth suffer a sea-changeInto something rich and strange.Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Ding-dong Hark! now I hear them,—Ding-dong, bell.” | Ariel |
| “Now my charms are all o’erthrown,And what strength I have’s mine own, -Which is most faint: now, ’tis true,I must be here confined by you…But release me from my bandsWith the help of your good hands:Gentle breath of yours my sailsMust fill, or else my project fails,Which was to please: now I wantSpirits to enforce, art to enchant;And my ending is despair,Unless I be relieved by prayer,Which pierces so, that it assaultsMercy itself, and frees all faults.As you from crimes would pardon’d be,Let your indulgence set me free.” | Prospero’s Epilogue |
| “Then to the elements be free…” | Prospero |
| “You mar our labour: keep your cabins:you do assist the storm[…] What cares these roarers for the name of king?” | Boatswain |
| You are three men of sin, whom destiny, That hath to instrument this lower world And what is in’t, the never-surfeited sea Hath caused to belch up you, and on this island Where man doth not inhabit-you ‘monist men Being most unfit to live. I have made you mad” | Ariel as the Harpy |
| “Let me live here foreverSo rare a wondered father and wifeMakes this place a paradise.” | Ferdinand |
| A devil, a born devil, on whose natureNurture can never stick; on whom my pains, Humanely taken, all, all lost, quite lost And as with age his body uglier grows, So his mind cankers. I will plague them all, Even to roaring.” | Prospero |
| “Old lord, I cannot blame thee,Who am myself attached with weariness To th’ dulling of my spirits. Sit down and rest. Even here I will put off my hope and keep it No longer for my flatterer. He is drowned Whom thus we stray to find, and the sea mocks Our frustrate search on land. Well, let him go.” | Alonso |
The Tempest: Quotes to Know
July 22, 2019