Quotes (The Winter’s Tale)

Key quotes from The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare

“I speak as my understanding instructs me and as mine honesty puts it to utterance.”

(Archidamus, Act 1 Scene 1)

“How say you?

My prisoner? Or my guest? by your dread 'Verily',

One of them you shall be.”

(Hermione, Act 1 Scene 2)

“What we changed

Was innocence for innocence. We knew not

The doctrine of ill-doing, nor dreamed

That any did.”

(Polixenes, Act 1 Scene 2)

“Be plainer with me. Let me know my trespass

By its own visage; if I then deny it,

'Tis none of mine.”

(Camillo, Act 1 Scene 2)

“Is this nothing?

Why then the world and all that’s in’t is nothing:

The covering sky is nothing, Bohemia nothing,

My wife is nothing, nor nothing have these nothings,

If this be nothing.”

(Leontes, Act 1 Scene 2)

“A sad tale’s best for winter. I have one / Of sprites and goblins.”

(Mamillius, Act 2, Scene 1)

“There may be in the cup

A spider steeped …

I have drunk, and seen the spider.”

(Leontes, Act 2, Scene 1)

“The silence often of pure innocence

Persuades when speaking fails.”

(Paulina, Act 2 Scene 2)

“Nor night nor day no rest.”

(Leontes, Act 2, Scene 3)

“It shall scarce boot me

To say 'Not guilty': mine integrity

Being counted falsehood, shall, as I express it,

Be so received. But thus: if powers divine

Behold our human actions, as they do,

I doubt not then but innocence shall make

False accusation blush and tyranny

Tremble at patience.”

(Hermione, Act 3 Scene 2)

“Apollo's angry, and the heavens themselves

Do strike at my injustice.”

(Leontes, Act 3 Scene 2)

“How he glisters

Through my rust, and how his piety

Does my deeds make the blacker!”

(Leontes, Act 3, Scene 2)

“This is the chase.

I am gone forever!”

(Antigonus, Act 3, Scene 3)

“Thou met’st with things dying,

I with things newborn.”

(Shepherd, Act 3, Scene 3)

“Your patience this allowing,

I turn my glass and give my scene such growing

As you had slept between.”

(Time, Act 4, Scene 1)

“Since it is in my power

To o'erthrow law and in one self-born hour

To plant and o'erwhelm custom.”

(Time, Act 4 Scene 1)

“This is an art

Which does mend nature, change it rather, but

The art itself is nature.”

(Polixenes, Act 4, Scene 4)

“This is the prettiest lowborn lass that ever

Ran on the greensward: nothing she does or seems

But smacks of something greater than herself,

Too noble for this place.”

(Polixenes, Act 4, Scene 4)

“Ha, ha! What a fool honesty is!”

(Autolycus, Act 4 Scene 4)

“Though I am not naturally honest, I am so sometimes by chance”

(Autolycus, Act 4 Scene 4)

“I am ashamed. Does not the stone rebuke me

For being more stone than it?”

(Leontes, Act 5 Scene 3)

“So much the more our carver’s excellence.

Which lets go by some sixteen years and makes her

As she lived now.”

(Paulina, Act 5, Scene 3)

“It is required

You do awake your faith.”

(Paulina, Act 5, Scene 3)