“What win I, if I gain the thing I seek?A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy.Who buys a minute's mirth to wail a week?Or sells eternity to get a toy?For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy?Or what fond beggar, but to touch the crown,Would with the sceptre straight be strucken down?”

“Who buys a minute's mirth to wail a week? Or sell eternity to get a toy? For one grape who will the vine destroy?”

“Those that much covet are with gain so fond,For what they have not, that which they possessThey scatter and unloose it from their bond,And so, by hoping more, they have but less;Or, gaining more, the profit of excessIs but to surfeit, and such griefs sustain,That they prove bankrupt in this poor-rich gain.”

“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...”

“Thus play I in one person many people, And none contented: sometimes am I king; Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar, And so I am: then crushing penury Persuades me I was better when a king; Then am I king'd again: and by and by Think that I am unking'd by Bolingbroke, And straight am nothing: but whate'er I be, Nor I nor any man that but man is With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased With being nothing.”

“I dreamt a dream tonight.Mercutio: And so did I.Romeo: Well, what was yours?Mercutio: That dreamers often lie.Romeo: In bed asleep while they do dream things true.”

“Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks.”