quotage

[burntcopper]

Pondering what the most quoted books/plays are. (no, we're not including speeches or declarations of independence-type things. Works of fiction.)

Shakespeare is a no-brainer. The amount of words he made up, not to mention phrases that entered the english language (sitting through hamlet your first time is an education).
Alice in Wonderland gets quoted a lot, normally consciously but in a lot of cases, it's become the stock phrase of description ('Down the rabbit hole', 'curiouser and curiouser').
Pratchett is quoted a lot in my circle of mates, but then we're all geeks.

Any others you can think of? Specifically ones that entered the common language.

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Chaucer: specifically Canterbury Tales.

'He was a verray parfit gentil knight.'

'Nowher so bisy a man as he ther nas,
And yet he semed bisier than he was.'

'But every thyng which schyneth as the gold, Nis nat gold, as that I have herd it told.'

'Therefore it behooveth hire a full long spoon That shal ete with a feend.'

'One eare it heard, at the other out it went.'

'Mordre wol out, that see we day by day.'

'Thanne is it wysdom, as thynketh me, To maken vertu of necessite'

'Many a smale maketh a grate.'

'Felds hath eyen, and wode have eres.'

'So was hir jolly whistel wel y-wette.'

'Frieth in his own grease.'

'And for to se, and eek for to be seye.'

'For thre may kepe a counsel, if twain be awaie.'

'Ther n' is no werkman whatever he be, That may both werken wel and hastily.'

- but also Troilus and Criseyde:

'For of Fortune's sharpe adversite, The worste kynde of infortune is this, A man to hav bent in prosperite, And it remembren whan it passed is.'

'It is not good a sleping hound to wake.'

'Of harmes two the less is for to chose.'

- as well as a few other well-known ones:

'She lovede Right fro the firste sighte.'

'Love is blynde.'

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Similar vintage, different country: the Commedia Divina