We've listed some well-known quotes from Coriolanus, in order of their appearance in the play

Coriolanus standing with other men, all of them wearing red togas apart from one man wearing a yellow robe
A scene from the 2007 production of Coriolanus, directed by Gregory Doran
Photo by Simon Annand © RSC Browse and license our images

Had I a dozen sons, each in my love alike, and none less dear than thine and my good Marcius, I had rather had eleven die nobly for their country than one voluptuously surfeit out of action.
(Volumnia, Act 1 Scene 3)

If any think brave death outweighs bad life, 
And that his country's dearer than himself,
Let him alone, or so many so minded, 
Wave thus to express his disposition,
(Martius, Act 1 Scene 6)

Nature teaches beasts to know their friends.
(Sicinius, Act 2 Scene 1)

More of your conversation would infect my brain, being the herdsmen of the beastly plebeians.
(Menenius, Act 2 Scene 1)

What is the city but the people?
(Sicinius, Act 3 Scene 1)

But now 'tis odds beyond arithmetic,
And manhood is called foolery when it stands
Against a falling fabric.
(Cominius, Act 3 Scene 1)

His nature is too noble for the world:
He would not flatter Neptune for his trident,
Or Jove for’s power to thunder.
(Menenius, Act 3 Scene 1)

Action is eloquence.
(Volumnia, Act 3 scene 2)

There is a world elsewhere.
(Coriolanus, Act 3 Scene 3)

Anger's my meat: I sup upon myself,
And so shall starve with feeding.
(Volumnia, Act 4 Scene 2)

Let me have war, say I: it exceeds peace as far as day does night: it's sprightly waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible: a getter of more bastard children than war's a destroyer of men.
(First Servingman, Act 4 Scene 5)

If you have writ your annals true, ’t is there,
That, like an eagle in a dovecote, I
Fluttered your Volscians in Corioles.
Alone I did it. Boy!
(Coriolanus, Act 5 scene 6)

My rage is gone,
And I am struck with sorrow.
(Aufidius, Act 5 Scene 6)

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