Famous quotes from As You Like It

Shakespeare’s pastoral comedy As You Like It features a witty heroine, exile from court to the Forest of Arden, and love flourishing in all its guises (and disguises). It includes one of Shakespeare’s most-quoted speeches, The Seven Ages of Man, so beloved that it appears in not one but two locations at the Folger—the stained-glass window at the end of the Reading Room and the sky canopy in our historic theater. Below are some of the most well-known lines, in order of their appearance in the play.

The Seven Ages of Man

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then the whining schoolboy with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
—Jaques, Act 2, Scene 7 

More quotes from As You Like It

Well said. That was laid on with a trowel.
—Celia, Act 1, Scene 2

O, how full of briers is this working-day world!
—Rosalind, Act 1, Scene 3

Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
—Duke Senior, Act 2, Scene 1

Therefore my age is as a lusty winter,
Frosty but kindly.
—Adam, Act 2, Scene 3

We that are true lovers run into strange capers.
—Touchstone, Act 2, Scene 4

Thou speak’st wiser than thou art ware of.
—Rosalind, Act 2, Scene 4

Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me
And turn his merry note
Unto the sweet bird’s throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither.
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.
—Amiens, Act 2, Scene 5

A fool, a fool, I met a fool i’ th’ forest,
A motley fool.
—Jaques, Act 2, Scene 7

And so from hour to hour we ripe and ripe,
And then from hour to hour we rot and rot,
And thereby hangs a tale.
—Jaques, Act 2, Scene 7

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.
Then heigh-ho, the holly.
This life is most jolly.
—Amiens, Act 2, Scene 7

O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful, and yet again wonderful, and after that
out of all whooping!
—Celia, Act 3, Scene 2

Do you not know I am a woman? When I think, I must speak.
—Rosalind, Act 3, Scene 2

Love is merely a madness,
and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a
whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are
not so punished and cured is that the lunacy is so
ordinary that the whippers are in love too.
—Rosalind (as Ganymede), Act 3, Scene 2

I pray you, do not fall in love with me,
For I am falser than vows made in wine.
—Rosalind (as Ganymede), Act 3, Scene 5

Forever and a day.
—Orlando, Act 4, Scene 1

Men are April when they woo, December when they wed. Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives.
—Rosalind (as Ganymede), Act 4, Scene 1

Men have died from time to time and worms have
eaten them, but not for love.
—Rosalind (as Ganymede), Act 4, Scene 1

The fool doth think he is wise, but the
wise man knows himself to be a fool.
—Orlando, Act 5, Scene 1

For your brother and my sister no sooner met but they looked, no sooner looked but they loved, no sooner loved but they sighed, no sooner sighed but they asked one another the reason, no sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy; and in these degrees have they made a pair of stairs to marriage, which they will climb incontinent, or else be incontinent before marriage. They are in the very wrath of love, and they will together. Clubs cannot part them.
—Rosalind (as Ganymede), Act 5, Scene 2

But O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes.
—Orlando, Act 5, Scene 2

I’ll have no husband, if you be not he.
—Rosalind, Act 5, Scene 4