Caliban Quotes

• You taught me language, and my profit on't / Is, I know how to curse

  William Shakespeare

  Taught, Language, Tempest

  'The Tempest' (1611) act 1, sc. 2, l. 363

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices, That, if I then had waked after long sleep, Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming, The clouds methought would open, and show riches Ready to drop upon me; that, when I waked, I cried to dream again.

  William Shakespeare

  Dream, Sweet, Hurt

  'The Tempest' (1611) act 3, sc. 2, l. [152]

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Why what a fool was I to this drunken monster for a God. - Caliban

  William Shakespeare

  Monsters, Fool

  4 Copy quote

• When I waked, I cried to dream again

  William Shakespeare

  Dream, Tempest, Long Sleep

  'The Tempest' (1611) act 3, sc. 2, l. [152]

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• When thou cam'st first, Thou strok'st me and made much of me; wouldst give me Water with berries in't; and teach me how To name the bigger light, and how the less, That burn by day and night; and then I loved thee And showed thee all the qualities o' th' isle, The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile.

  William Shakespeare

  Spring, Night, Light

  William Shakespeare (1998). “Four Late Plays”, p.357, Wordsworth Editions

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• And teach me how To name the bigger light, and how the less, That burn by day and night.

  William Shakespeare

  Science, Moon, Night

  William Shakespeare, Kathleen Ermitage (2002). “The Tempest”, p.56, Barron's Educational Series

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• ...and then, in dreaming, / The clouds methought would open and show riches / Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked / I cried to dream again.

  William Shakespeare

  Dream, Clouds, Riches

  'The Tempest' (1611) act 3, sc. 2, l. [152]

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises.

  William Shakespeare

  Noise, Tempest, Isle

  'The Tempest' (1611) act 3, sc. 2, l. [147]

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Evil is such a simplistic way to describe any character, be it Iago or Caliban, or any character from history.

  Denis

  Character, Evil, Way

  7 Copy quote

• A southwest blow on ye and blister you all o'er!' 'The red plague rid you!' 'Toads, beetles, bats, light on you!' 'As wicked dew as e'er my mother brushed with raven's feather from unwholesome fen drop on you.' 'Strange stuff' 'Thou jesting monkey thou' 'Apes with foreheads villainous low' 'Pied ninny' 'Blind mole...' -The Caliban Curses

  Gary D. Schmidt

  Mother, Blow, Light

  8 Copy quote

• One of the reasons [William] Shakespeare is so endlessly fascinating is that you can look at that figure from about 10 different angles: Caliban in Shakespeare's day was probably viewed as a sort of comic, barbarian type, but into the 19th century there were productions where Caliban was the hero. He's a potential rapist of a minor. Is that a good thing? No, it is not. On the other hand, Prospero's got him cooped up in a cave and tortures him if he doesn't do what Prospero wants. Is that a good thing? No. Shakespeare doesn't let you off easy.

  Margaret Atwood

  Hero, Hands, Looks

  4 Copy quote

• Do I do as false prophets do and puff air into simulacra? Am I a Sorcerer--like Macbeth's witches--mixing truth and lies in incandescent shapes? Or am I a kind of very minor scribe of a prophetic Book--telling such truth as in me lies, with aid of such fiction as I acknowledge mine, as Prospero acknowledged Caliban.

  A. S. Byatt

  Lying, Book, Air

  4 Copy quote

• This is why Caliban was a punishment. I realize it now - it's a beautiful, perfect world of nothingness. No connection, no longing, no . . . love. A world we're trapped in until we're needed here, a world we're condemned to while everyone we might care about forgets us.

  Jackson Pearce

  Beautiful, Punishment, Perfect

  4 Copy quote

• If you had told Sycorax that her son Caliban was as handsome as Apollo, she would have been pleased, witch as she was.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Son, Handsome, Apollo

  William Makepeace Thackeray (1849). “Vanity fair. With illustr. by the author”, p.19

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• At the happy ending of the Tempest, Prospero brings the kind back togeter with his son, and finds Miranda's true love and punishes the bad duke and frees Ariel and becomes a duke himself again. Everyone - except Caliban - is happy, and everyone is forgiven, and everyone is fine, and they all sail away on calm seas. Happy endings. That's how it is in Shakespeare. But Shakespeare was wrong. Sometimes there isn't a Prospero to make everything fine again. And sometimes the quality of mercy is strained.

  Gary D.

  Son, Sea, Quality

  4 Copy quote

• Gargoyles were the complement to saints; Leonardo's caricatures were complementary to his untiring search for ideal beauty. And gargoyles were the expression of all the passions, the animal forces, the Caliban gruntings and groanings which are left in human nature when the divine has been poured away. Leonardo was less concerned than his Gothic predecessors with the ethereal parts of our nature, and so his caricatures, in their expression of passionate energy, merge imperceptibly into the heroic.

  Kenneth Clark

  Passion, Animal, Expression

  16 Copy quote

• The 19thc hatred of Realism is Caliban's enraged reaction to seeing his own face in the mirror. The 19thc rejection of Romanticism is Caliban's fury at not seeing his face reflected in the mirror.

  Oscar Wilde

  Mirrors, Rejection, Hatred

  7 Copy quote