Romeo and Juliet Quotes

The 7 most famous lines from William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (1595), each with its speaker and the scene it belongs to. These are the quotes readers underline, copy into essays and put on walls - gathered in one place, explained in a line.

• “A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life.”

  - The Chorus. The Prologue — Shakespeare spoils his own plot in the first fourteen lines, which is the whole design: you watch the machinery, not the outcome.

• “O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?”

  - Juliet. The balcony scene — and the most misread line in English: she is asking why he must be a Montague, not where he is.

• “What's in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet.”

  - Juliet. Still on the balcony: a teenager out-arguing her entire society's feud in two lines of botany.

• “A plague o' both your houses!”

  - Mercutio. Dying under Romeo's arm, he curses the families he does not belong to — the exact moment the play's comedy ends.

• “These violent delights have violent ends.”

  - Friar Laurence. Warning the couple in the cell where he marries them; the line became the most borrowed sentence in modern tragedy-writing.

• “Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow / That I shall say good night till it be morrow.”

  - Juliet. The balcony exit — she cannot stop saying goodbye, which in this play is foreshadowing with the safety off.

• “For never was a story of more woe / Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”

  - Prince Escalus. The play's final couplet, spoken over the bodies — the street finally silent.

Why these lines survive

William Shakespeare’s sentences earn their fame by compression: each line carries the whole book’s argument in a form you can carry in your pocket. Read in order, the 7 quotes above also sketch the novel’s shape - the world it opens, the pressure it applies, the note it ends on. If you meet them before the book, nothing is spoiled beyond mood; if you meet them after, each one lands like a place you have been.

Quote collectors: pair this page with the Romeo and Juliet quiz to see which lines actually stuck, the book club questions when you want to argue about them, or how long the reread takes - about 1 hour and 45 minutes at an average pace. If the lines did their job and you want more of the same nerve, the books like Romeo and Juliet list is next.

Want the whole shelf’s lines? Our William Shakespeare plays in order guide lists every book.

How to use a quotes page

Three honest uses. Before reading: skim the first two quotes to taste the prose - if the voice does not pull you, the book will not either. During: mark which quote you actually reach in the text, because the distance between famous line and lived scene is where a book keeps its secrets. After: pick the one quote you would defend at dinner and check it against the discussion questions - a quote you can argue about is a quote you understood. What a quotes page is not for is replacing the book; five lines of William Shakespeare are an invitation, not a summary.

More quote collections

Pride and Prejudice quotes, Jane Eyre quotes, Little Women quotes, The Catcher in the Rye quotes - or browse quotes from all 133 classics. Then see which of them stuck on the original book quiz.

Frequently asked questions