The Winter’s Tale Quotes

Looking for The Winter’s Tale quotes? Read our selection of the very best quotes from The Winter’s Tale, along with speaker, act and scene. As with so many of his plays Shakespeare brings his characters to life snappy dialogue and a selection of fantastic quotes.

Read on below for the most well known The Winter’s Tale quotes:

“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)

“We were as twinned lambs that did frisk i’ th’ sun / And did bleat the one at th’ other. What we changed / Was innocence for innocence. “

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)

“Exit, pursued by a bear.“

Stage direction (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!
And Trust, his sworn brother, a very simple gentleman!”

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)

Are we missing any great The Winter’s Tale quotes? Let us know in the comments section below.