Thisbe, the flowers of odious savours sweet – .
– William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 1. Bottom, speaking as Pyramus, provides us with another of his funny malapropisms. When he speaks about flowers with "odious savours sweet," he is immediately corrected by director Quince: "Odours, odours!" Bottom of course meant to say something like "odours savours sweet." But if the overconfident weaver didn’t so ingloriously mangle the English language, he wouldn’t be the likeable comic character that he is!