“I may chance have someodd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me,because I have railed so long against marriage: butdoth not the appetite alter? a man loves the meatin his youth that he cannot endure in his age.Shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets ofthe brain awe a man from the career of his humour?No, the world must be peopled. When I said I woulddie a bachelor, I did not think I should live till Iwere married.”

“When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.”

“A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age.”

“I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in his grace; and it better fits my blood to be disdained of all than to fashion a carriage to rob love from any: in this, though I cannot be said to be a flattering honest man, it must not be denied but I am a plain-dealing villain. I am trusted with a muzzle and enfranchised with a clog; therefore I have decreed not to sing in my cage. If I had my mouth, I would bite; if I had my liberty, I would do my liking: in the meantime, let me be that I am, and seek not to alter me.”

“I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was: man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was--there is no man can tell what. Methought I was,--and methought I had,--but man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream: it shall be called Bottom's Dream, because it hath no bottom...”

“That man that hath a tongue, I say is no man, if with his tongue he cannot win a woman.”

“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 Palentine; he is every man in no man. If a throstle sing, he falls straight a-cap’ring. He will fence with his own shadow. If I should marry him, I should marry twenty husbands.”