- Dogberry: Thou naughty varlet!
- Conrade: Away! You are an ass! You are an *ass*.
- Dogberry: Dost thou not suspect my place? Dost thou not suspect my years?
- [Conrade escorted away]
- Dogberry: O that she were here to write me down an ass! But, masters, remember that I am an ass; though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass. No, thou villain, thou art full of piety, as shall be proved upon thee by good witness. I am a wise fellow, and, which is more, an officer, and, which is more, a householder, and, which is more, as pretty a piece of flesh as any is in Messina, and one that knows the law, go to; and a rich fellow enough, go to; and one that hath had losses, and one that hath two gowns and every thing handsome about him. O that I had been writ down an ass!
- Benedick: Methinks she's too low for a high praise, too brown for a fair praise, too little for a great praise.
- Beatrice: Lord, I could not endure a husband with a beard on his face: I had rather lie in the woollen.
- Leonato: You may light on a husband that hath no beard.
- Beatrice: What would I do with him? Dress him in my apparel and make him my waiting-gentlewoman? He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man: and he that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him.
- Claudio: You seem to me as Diane in her orb, as chaste as is the bud ere it be blown. But you are more intemperate in your blood than Venus! Or, those pampered animals that rage in savage sensuality!
- Beatrice: Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner.
- Benedick: Fair Beatrice, I thank you for your pains.
- Beatrice: I took no more pains for those thanks than you take pains to thank me: if it had been painful, I would not have come.
- Benedick: You take pleasure then in the message?
- Beatrice: Yea, signior, just so much as you may take upon a knife's point. You have no stomach, signior? Fare you well.
- [exits]
- Benedick: Ha! "Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner." There's a double meaning in that. "I took no more pains for those thanks than you took pains to thank me." That's as much as to say, any pains that I take for you is as good as thanks! If I do not take pity of her, I am a villain. If I do not love her, I am a fool.
- Benedick: The world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.
- Claudio: Behold how like a maid she blushes here! Would you not swear, all you that see her, that she were a maid, by these exterior shows? But she is none! She knows the heat of a luxurious bed! Her blush is guiltiness, not modesty.
- Beatrice: O that I were a man! What, bear her in hand until they come to take hands; and then, with public accusation, uncovered slander, unmitigated rancor. O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the market-place!
- Benedick: Hear me, Beatrice.
- Beatrice: Talk with a man out at a window! O, a proper saying!
- Benedick: Nay, but, Beatrice.
- Beatrice: Sweet Hero! She is wronged, she is slandered, she is undone.
- Benedick: Beatrice.
- Beatrice: Princes and counties, a goodly count. O that I were a man for his sake! Or that I had any friend who would be a man for my sake. But manhood is melted into courtesies, valor into compliment, and men are only turned into tongue, and trim ones too! For he is now as valiant as Hercules who only tells a lie and swears it! I cannot be a man with wishing, therefore I will die a woman grieving.
- Benedick: I pray thee now, tell me for which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me?
- Beatrice: For them all together; which maintained so politic a state of evil that they will not admit any good part to intermingle with them. But for which of my good parts did you first suffer love for me?
- Benedick: Suffer love! A good epithet! I do suffer love indeed, for I love thee against my will.
- Beatrice: In spite of your heart, I think. If you spite it for my sake, I will spite it for yours; for I will never love that which my friend hates.
- Benedick: Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably.
- Benedick: I cannot show it in rhyme; I have tried: I can find out no rhyme to 'lady' but 'baby,' an innocent rhyme; for 'scorn,' 'horn,' a hard rhyme; for, 'school,' 'fool,' a babbling rhyme; very ominous endings: no, I was not born under a rhyming planet.