All's Well That Ends Well

All impediments in fancy’s course
Are motives of more fancy.

All's Well That Ends Well is a play by William Shakespeare. It is often considered one of his problem plays, not easily classifiable as a comedy or tragedy. It was probably written in the later middle part of Shakespeare's career, between 1601 and 1608.

Act I

• Be thou blest, Bertram; and succeed thy father
  In manners, as in shape! thy blood and virtue
  Contend for empire in thee; and thy goodness
  Share with thy birthright! Love all, trust a few,
  Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy
  Rather in power than use, and keep thy friend
  Under thy own life’s key: be check’d for silence,
  But never tax’d for speech. What heaven more will
  That thee may furnish, and my prayers pluck down,
  Fall on thy head!
  • Countess Of Rousillon, Act I, Scene i

• 'T were all one
  That I should love a bright particular star,
  And think to wed it.
  • Helena, scene i

• The hind, that would be mated by the lion,
  Must die for love.
  • Helena, scene i

• Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
  Which we ascribe to Heaven.
  • Helena, scene i

• His good remembrance, sir,
  Lies richer in your thoughts, than on his tomb;
  So in approof lives not his epitaph,
  As in your royal speech.
  • Bertram, scene ii

• Service is no heritage.
  • Clown, scene iii

• He must needs go, that the devil drives.
  • Clown, scene iii

• Even so it was with me, when I was young:
  If we are nature’s, these are ours; this thorn
  Doth to our rose of youth rightly belong:
  Our blood to us, this to our blood is born;
  It is the show and seal of nature’s truth,
  Where love’s strong passion is impress’d in youth:
  By our remembrances of days foregone,
  Such were our faults; — or then we thought them none.
  Her eye is sick on’t: I observe her now.
  • Countess of Rousillon, scene iii

• My friends were poor, but honest.
  • Helena, scene iii

Act II

• Great floods have flown
  From simple sources; and great seas have dried,
  When miracles have by the greatest been denied.
  Oft expectation fails, and most oft there
  Where most it promises.
  • Helena, scene i

• I will show myself highly fed, and lowly taught.
  • Clown, scene ii

• They say, miracles are past.
  • Lafeu, scene iii

• All the learned and authentic fellows.
  • Lafeu, scene iii

• From lowest place when virtuous things proceed,
  The place is dignified by the doer’s deed.
  • King of France, scene iii

• A young man, married, is a man that ’s marr’d.
  • Parolles, scene iii

• Make the coming hour o’erflow with joy,
  And pleasure drown the brim.
  • Parolles, scene iv

Act III

• No legacy is so rich as honesty.
  • Mariana, scene v

Act IV

• The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.
  • 1st Lord, scene iii

• Simply the thing I am
  Shall make me live.
  • Parolles, scene iii

• All's well that ends well still: the fine's the crown;
  Whate'er the course, the end is the renown.
  • Helena, scene iv

Act V

• Whose words all ears took captive.
  • Lafeu, scene iii

• Praising what is lost,
  Makes the remembrance dear.
  • King of France, scene iii

• For we are old, and on our quick'st decrees
  The inaudible and noiseless foot of time
  Steals, ere we can effect them.
  • King of France, scene iii

• All impediments in fancy’s course
  Are motives of more fancy.
  • Bertram, scene iii

• 'T is but the shadow of a wife you see,
  The name and not the thing.
  • Helena, scene iii

• The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet.
  • King of France, scene iii