Shakespeare Love Quotes

Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs - quote

Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs;
Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes;
Being vex’d a sea nourish’d with lovers’ tears.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 1. Romeo is not finding love very easy. He uses three metaphors to explain the heartbreaks it causes. He compares it to a smoke made up of lovers’ sighs, a fire burning in the eyes of lovers, and when twarted a sea filled with lovers’ tears. This is one of Shakespeare’s most famous definitions of love, showing how it be either a source of great happiness or heartbreak.

Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight!
For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 5. There are two kinds of irony here in Romeo’s soliloquy, as the young Montague meets Juliet for the first time and is immediately smitten. He instantaneously and unexpectedly forgets his love for Rosaline and falls hopelessly and completely for Juliet. This is an example of situational irony. There is also dramatic irony, because what he doesn’t know and the audience does is that Juliet is a Capulet, making their love impossible because of the long-standing feud between the two families. This quote also provides evidence of Romeo’s immaturity and impulsivity.

Ay me, for aught that I could ever read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 1, Scene 1. Lysander ironically offers comfort to his love, Hermia, by telling her that the troubles they are experiencing show that their love is indeed true love. This is one of the most famous lines from the play. It is foreshadowing of all the confusion, conflict and complications that will arise for the lovers in the play.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 1, Scene 1. Helena is saying that love depends on one’s perception of another person. It does not use eyes to see the beloved, but the mind. Therefore love is blind – Cupid is sometimes depicted with a blindfold on. Here the name Cupid, son of Venus and Mars in classical mythology, is a metaphor for love itself. This passage is also foreshadowing of the blind love between the Fairy Queen Titania and the ass-headed Nick Bottom.

O Helen, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine!
To what, my love, shall I compare thine eyne?
Crystal is muddy. O, how ripe in show
Thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow!
That pure congealed white, high Taurus snow,
Fann’d with the eastern wind, turns to a crow
When thou hold’st up thy hand: O, let me kiss
This princess of pure white, this seal of bliss!

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 2. After Puck drops the love potion into Demetrius’ eyes, he wakes up, sees Helena and immediately falls in love with her. Demetrius uses metaphorical language to describe Helena’s beauty and compare her to a goddess and her lips to tempting cherries. This is a sharp change from his former dislike and disgust of Helena. She is really confused at this stage, as Lysander just before this told her that Demetrius didn’t like her: "he loves not you."

This is the very ecstasy of love.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 1. Polonius to Ophelia, speaking about Hamlet’s crazy love, after he burst into Ophelia’s chamber half dressed and frantic. Polonius says that his daughter’s rejection of Hamlet has left him mad and they must report this to the King. For a man who prides himself on his superior insights and and his clever stratagems, it is an irony that Polonius is immediately taken in by Hamlet’s pretence of madness because of lovesickness.
If music be the food of love, play on - William Shakespeare In Excess

If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour!

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 1. The soliloquy by lovesick Orsino, Duke of Illyria, forms the opening lines of Twelfth Night. The first line is one of the most famous in the play and one of Shakespeare’s most quoted. Orsino is so maddened with desire and love for the Lady Olivia, who does not reciprocate his passions, that it makes him sick and melancholic. He instructs his musicians to play him so much musical love-food that he overdoses and no longer desires love.

O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O, stay and hear; your true love’s coming,
That can sing both high and low:
Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man’s son doth know.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 3. Feste sings of journeys that end up in lovers meeting. The song foreshadows the happy romantic ending to the play, when Viola and Orsino find love together and Olivia and Sebastian are wed. It is particularly directed towards Feste’s mistress Olivia – “your true love’s coming.”
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