Love’s Labour’s Lost Quotes

Read our selection of the very best Love’s Labour’s Lost quotes, along with speaker, act and scene. The satire on the ineffectiveness of the attempted invasion of England by the Spanish is set around Pamplona and weaves in various takes on the theme of love. As with so many of his plays Shakespeare brings the characters to life with memorable dialogue and quotes.

Read on below for the most well known and significant Love’s Labour’s Lost quotes:

Our court shall be a little academe,
Still and contemplative in living art.

King (Act 1, Scene 1)

Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives,
Live registered upon our brazen tombs,
And then grace us in the disgrace of death
When, spite of cormorant devouring time,
Th’endeavour of this present breath may buy
That honour which shall bate his scythe’s keen edge
And make us heirs of all eternity.

King (Act 1, Scene 1)

Our court shall be a little academe,
Still and contemplative in living art.

King (Act 1, Scene 1)

As painfully to pore upon a book
To seek the light of truth, while truth the while
Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look.

Berowne (Act 1, Scene 1)

Assist me, some extemporal god of rhyme, for I am sure I shall turn sonnet.
Devise, wit: write, pen, for I am for whole volumes in folio.

Armado (Act 1, Scene 2)

Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye,
Not uttered by base sale of chapmen’s tongues

Princess of France (Act 2, Scene 1)

Your wit’s too hot, it speeds too fast, ‘twill tire.

Berowne (Act 2, Scene 1)

And how can that be true love which is falsely attempted?

Don Armado (Act 1, Scene 2)

Assist me, some extemporal god of rhyme, for I am sure I shall turn sonnet…
I am for whole volumes in folio.

Don Armado (Act 1, Scene 2)

Deceive me not now, Navarre is infected.

Boyet (Act 2, Scene 1)

And I forsooth in love! I that have been love’s whip,
A very beadle to a humorous sigh,
A critic, nay, a nightwatch constable.

Berowne (Act 3, Scene 1)

Only for praise; and praise we may afford
To any lady that subdues a lord.

Princess of France (Act 4, Scene 1)

Do not call it sin in me
That I am forsworn for thee.

Dumaine (Act 4, Scene 3)

Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves,
Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths.

Berowne (Act 4, Scene 3)

O me, with what strict patience have I sat,
To see a king transformed to a gnat!
To see great Hercules whipping a gig,
And profound Solomon tuning a jig,
And Nestor play at push-pin with the boys,
And critic Timon laugh at idle toys.

Berowne (Act 4, Scene 3)

From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive:
They are the ground, the books, the academes
From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire.

Berowne (Act 4, Scene 3)

They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.

Moth (Act 5, Scene 1)

O, they have lived long on the almsbasket of words.

Costard (Act 5, Scene 1)

Bear with me, I am sick;
I’ll leave it by degrees.

Berowne (Act 5, Scene 2)

If this austere insociable life
Change not your offer made in heat of blood…
Then, at the expiration of the year…
I will be thine.

Princess of France (Act 5, Scene 2)

Our wooing doth not end like an old play.
Jack hath not Jill.

Berowne (Act 5, Scene 2)

I am sorry, madam, for the news I bring
Is heavy in my tongue.

Marcade (Act 5, Scene 2)

You that way; we this way.

Don Armado (Act 5, Scene 2)

Are we missing any great Love’s Labour’s Lost quotes? Let us know in the comments section below.