Top 50 Quotes You Need for Your Essay from Othello

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#11: My advocation is not now in tune;

• Act 3 Scene 4
• Characters: Desdemona (speaker), Cassio, Othello
• Techniques: Motif, metaphor

#12: But jealous for they’re jealous. It is a monster / Begot upon itself, born on itself. 

• Act 3 Scene 4
• Characters: Emilia (speaker), Desdemona
• Techniques: Antanaclasis, imagery

#13: Villany hath made mocks with love

• Act 5 Scene 2
• Characters: Emilia (speaker), Othello
• Techniques: Personification

#14: I know not where is that Promethean heat / That can thy light relume./ When I have plucked thy rose

• Act 5 Scene 2
• Characters: Othello (speaker), Desdemona
• Techniques: Greek mythological allusion, metaphor, metonym 

#15: Will you, I pray, demand that demi-devil / Why he hath thus ensnared my soul and body? 

• Act 5 Scene 2
• Characters: Othello (speaker), Cassio, Iago
• Techniques: Blank verse, biblical allusion, dénouement

Womanhood and Social Duty

#16: I do perceive here a divided duty…I am hitherto your daughter. But here’s my husband,/And so much duty as my mother showed

• Act 1 Scene 3
• Characters: Desdemona (speaker), Othello, Brabantio
• Techniques: Monologue, characterisation, foreshadowing

#17: If she confess that she was half the wooer / Destruction on my head if my bad blame / Light on the man

• Act 1 Scene 3
• Characters: Brabantio (speaker), Othello, Desdemona
• Techniques: Metaphor, characterisation

#18: As hell’s from heaven! If it were now to die, / ‘Twere now to be most happy

• Act 2 Scene 1
• Characters: Othello (speaker), Desdemona
• Techniques: Motif, biblical imagery, superlative, hyperbole

#19: Our general’s wife is now the general

• Act 2 Scene 3
• Characters: Iago (speaker), Cassio, Desdemona
• Techniques: Antanaclasis, condescending tone 

#20: Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore; / Be sure of it. Give me the ocular proof

• Act 3 Scene 3
• Characters: Othello (speaker), Iago
• Techniques: Motif, metonym, contrast

#21: They are all but stomachs, and we all but food

• Act 3 Scene 4
• Characters: Emilia (speaker), Desdemona
• Techniques: Metonym, repetition, contrast, analogy

#22: And she’s obedient, as you say, obedient, / Very obedient.—Proceed you in your tears.

• Act 4 Scene 1
• Characters: Othello (speaker), Lodovico, Desdemona
• Techniques: Epanalepsis, blank verse, directive language

#23: Honest…as summer flies are in the shambles / That quicken even with blowing

• Act 4 Scene 2
• Characters: Othello (speaker), Desdemona
• Techniques: Simile, metaphor, imagery, sarcastic tone 

#24: It is the cause; it is the cause, my soul. / Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars; /It is the cause. 

• Act 5 Scene 2
• Characters: Othello (speaker), Desdemona
• Techniques: Epanalepsis, juxtaposition, ambiguity 

#25: O perjured woman, thou dost stone my heart, / And mak’st me call what I intend to do / A murder, which I thought a sacrifice. / I saw the handkerchief.

• Act 5 Scene 2
• Characters: Othello (speaker), Desdemona
• Techniques: Motif, symbol 

#26: Nobody; I myself. Farewell.

• Act 5 Scene 2
• Characters: Desdemona (speaker), Emilia, Othello
• Techniques: First person, juxtaposition, simile 

The Power of Prejudice

#27: What a full fortune does the Thick-lips owe / If he can carry’t thus!

• Act 1 Scene 1
• Characters: Roderigo (speaker), Iago, Othello
• Techniques: Derogatory language, foreshadowing

#28: Thus do I ever make my fool my purse, /For I mine own gained knowledge should profane

• Act 1 Scene 3
• Characters: Iago (speaker), Othello
• Techniques: Iambic pentameter, metonym, hyperbole

#29: Hell and night/Must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light.

• Act 1 Scene 3
• Characters: Iago (speaker)
• Techniques: Contrast, subversion, biblical imagery

#30: I hate the Moor / And it is thought abroad that ’twixt my sheets / ’Has done my office.

• Act 1 Scene 3
• Characters: Iago (speaker), Othello
• Techniques: Double entendre, synecdoche

#31: O, you are well tuned now / But I’ll set down the pegs that make this music / As honest as I am.

• Act 2 Scene 1
• Characters: Iago (speaker)
• Techniques: Motif, metaphor, dramatic irony, paradox

#32: Mark me with what violence she first loved the Moor, / but for bragging and telling her fantastical lies.

• Act 2 Scene 1
• Characters: Iago (speaker), Desdemona, Othello
• Techniques: Ambiguity, directive language, blank verse

#33: Make the Moor thank me, love me and reward me/ For making him egregiously an ass / And practicing upon his peace and quiet, / Even to madness. 

• Act 2 Scene 1
• Characters: Iago (speaker), Othello
• Techniques: Polysyndeton, contrast 

#34: For that I do suspect the lusty Moor/ Hath leap’d into my seat

• Act 2 Scene 1
• Characters: Iago (speaker), Othello
• Techniques: Innuendo, double-entendre 

#35: So will I turn her virtue into pitch / And out of her own goodness make the net / That shall enmesh them all. 

• Act 2 Scene 3
• Characters: Iago (speaker), Desdemona
• Techniques: Metaphor, juxtaposition

#36: The Moor already changes with my poison

• Act 3 Scene 3
• Characters: Iago (speaker), Othello
• Techniques: Synecdoche, metaphor, foreshadowing

#37: Or keep it as a cistern for foul toads…Turn thy complexion there, / Patience, thou young and rose-lipp’d cherubin,– / Ay, there, look grim as hell!

• Act 4 Scene 2
• Characters: Othello (speaker), Desdemona
• Techniques: Contrast, directive language, subversion  

#38: Where a malignant and a turbaned Turk / Beat a Venetian…I took by the throat the circumcisèd dog, And smote him, thus.

• Act 5 Scene 2
• Characters: Othello (speaker), Lodovico, Gratiano
• Techniques: Simile, dehumanisation

Appearance VS Reality 

#39: But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve/For daws to peck at. I am not what I am.

• Act 1 Scene 1
• Characters: Iago (speaker)
• Techniques: Oxymoron, paradox, metaphor 

#40: It is as sure as you are Roderigo, / Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago: In following him, I follow but myself;

• Act 1 Scene 1
• Characters: Iago (speaker), Roderigo
• Techniques: Foreshadowing, simile, chiasmus

#41: That I have ta’en away this old man’s daughter, / It is most true; true I have married her / The very head and front of my offending / Hath this extent, no more. 

• Act 1 Scene 3
• Characters: Characters: Othello (speaker), Brabantio, Desdemona
• Techniques: Parataxis, confessional tone

#42: Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our / wills are gardeners. So that if we will plant nettles / or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up thyme,

• Act 1 Scene 3
• Characters: Iago (speaker), Roderigo
• Techniques: Metaphor, polysyndeton, symbolism

#43: And, good lieutenant, I think you think I love you

• Act 2 Scene 3
• Characters: Iago (speaker), Cassio
• Techniques: repetition, complex language 

#44: Nothing, my lord: or if – I know not what

• Act 3 Scene 3
• Characters: Iago (speaker), Othello
• Techniques: Repetition, negative expressive

#45: Was not that Cassio parted from my wife?…[Iago:] Cassio, my lord?

• Act 3 Scene 3
• Characters: Othello (speaker), Iago, Cassio
• Techniques: Repetition, characterisation

#46: Trifles light as air / Are to the jealous confirmations strong /As proofs of holy writ

• Act 3 Scene 3
• Characters: Iago (speaker)
• Techniques: Simile, analogy, biblical allusion

#47: But riches fineless is as poor as winter / To him that ever fears he shall be poor.

• Act 3 Scene 3
• Characters: Othello (speaker), Iago
• Techniques: Simile, repetition

#48: I know our country disposition well; In Venice they do let heaven see the pranks / They dare not show their husbands.

• Act 3 Scene 3
• Characters: Iago (speaker), Othello
• Techniques: Motif, innuendo

#49: O thou weed / Who art so lovely fair, and smell’st so sweet, / That the sense aches at thee, would thou hadst never been born

• Act 4 Scene 2
• Characters: Othello (speaker), Desdemona
• Techniques: Dramatic irony, contrast, hyperbole

#50: Like the base Judean, threw a pearl away / Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued / eyes

• Act 5 Scene 2
• Characters: Othello (speaker), Desdemona, Lodovico
• Techniques: Simile, metonym, metaphor