Significant Quotations From Julius Caesar
For each quotation, identify:
- Speaker
- Audience to whom it was spoken
- Situation in which it was said
- Meaning
- “You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!
O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome,
Knew you not Pompey?”(Act I, Scene 1)
- “Beware the Ides of March.”(Act I, Scene 2)
- “Men at some time are masters of their fates.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”(Act I, Scene 2)
- “Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o’ nights.
Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look.
He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous.”(Act I, Scene 2)
- “O, he sits high in all the people’s hearts;
And that which would appear offense in us
His countenance, like richest alchemy,
Will change to virtue and to worthiness”(Act I, Scene 3)
- “It must be by his death. And for my part,
I know no personal cause to spurn at him,
But for the general…
Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasm or a hideous dream.”(Act II, Scene 1)
- “Our course will seem too bloody, Caius Cassius,
To cut the head off and hack the limbs,
Like wrath in death and envy afterwards;
For Antony is but a limb of Caesar.
Let’s be sacrificers, but not butchers, Caius.”(Act II, Scene 1)
- “Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.”(Act II, Scene 2)
- “When beggars die there are not comets seen;
The heavens themselves blaze for the death of princes.” (Act II, Scene 2)
- “I could be well moved, if I were as you.
If I could pray to move, prayers would move me.
But I am as constant as the Northern Star…”(Act III, Scene 1)
- “Cry ‘havoc’ and let slip the dogs of war. ”(Act III, Scene 1)
- “Eh tu, Brute! Then fall, Caesar!”(Act III, Scene 1)
- “How many ages hence
Shall this our lofty scene be acted over
In states unborn and accents yet unknown!”(Act III, Scene 1)
- “O mighty Caesar! Dost thou lie so low?
Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,
Shrunk to this little measure? Fare thee well.”(Act III, Scene 1)
- “O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers.
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever lived in the tide of times.”(Act III, Scene 1)
- “This was the most unkindest cut of all.” (Act III, Scene 2)
- “Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more. Had you rather Caesar were living, and die all slaves, than that Caesar were dead, to live all freemen?”
(Act III, Scene 2)
- “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones.
So let it be with Caesar . . . .
(For Brutus is an honorable man;
So are they all, all honorable men) . . . (Act III, Scene 2)
- “If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.
You all do know this mantle. I remember
The first time ever Caesar put it on.”(Act III, Scene 2)
- “Let me tell you, Cassius, you yourself
Are much condemned to have an itching palm
To sell and mart your offices for gold
To undeservers.”(Act IV, Scene 3)
- “There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.”(Act IV, Scene 3)
- ‘To tell thee thou shalt see me at Philippi.”(Act IV, Scene 3)
- “O Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet
Thy spirit walks abroad and turns our swords
In our own proper entrails.”(Act V, Scene 3)
- “This was the noblest Roman of them all.
All the conspirators save only he
Did that they did in envy of great Caesar.”(Act V, Scene 5)