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Who really said it

And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every thing

Written by William Shakespeare 1564–1616 · English playwright, poet & actor
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Genuine Shakespeare, and easy to pin down: the lines belong to Duke Senior in As You Like It, act 2, scene 1, addressing his fellow exiles in the Forest of Arden. The play was never printed in quarto — it first appeared in the 1623 First Folio, which reads “Findes tongues in trees, bookes in the running brookes, / Sermons in stones, and good in euery thing.”

Last verified 4 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every thing” And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every thing. — William Shakespeare, As You Like It, act 2, scene 1 (spoken by Duke Senior; first printed in the First Folio, 1623)

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Provenance

The source

Work
As You Like It
Passage
Act 2, scene 1 — Duke Senior, to his fellow exiles in the Forest of Arden
First printed
First Folio, 1623 — the play was never published in quarto
Folio reading
“Findes tongues in trees, bookes in the running brookes, / Sermons in stones, and good in euery thing.”

Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing. Act 2, scene 1

Modern-spelling text; the 1623 Folio prints “euery thing” as two words, and modern editions such as the Folger's and Project Gutenberg's set it as “everything.”

First Folio, 1623 — original spelling
Read the Folio text of act 2, scene 1
As You Like It, act 2, scene 1 (Folger Shakespeare)

How we verified it

Public domain

As You Like It was first printed in the 1623 First Folio, more than three centuries before the 1931 US copyright threshold, so both the Folio wording and long-standing modern-spelling texts of it — including Project Gutenberg's edition ↗ — are in the public domain. Individual modern annotated editions may carry their own editorial copyright, but the sentence quoted here is Shakespeare's own text.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

What goes wrong with it

The poet is right and the play is right. What drifts is the wording, the punctuation, and the fact that a character — not Shakespeare — is doing the talking.

“Find tongues in trees…” misquote

A clipped version circulates that drops “And this our life, exempt from public haunt” and turns “Finds” into “Find,” which breaks the grammar: Goodreads carries it as “Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks…” ↗. In the play it is “this our life” that finds them.

“And this, our life…” drift

Quote aggregators insert a comma after “this” and name no play at all — BrainyQuote prints “And this, our life, exempt from public haunt…” with no work cited ↗.

Shakespeare in his own voice context

The lines are Duke Senior's, spoken to his fellow exiles in the Forest of Arden as an argument that banishment is preferable to court — see the scene in the Folger edition ↗. Quoting it as Shakespeare's personal creed strips the irony out of it.

The 1623 First Folio — the only early printing of the play — reads “And this our life exempt from publike haunt, / Findes tongues in trees, bookes in the running brookes, / Sermons in stones, and good in euery thing” (Internet Shakespeare Editions, Folio 1 ↗).

Context

Why it matters

The speaker is not a nature poet on a country walk. Duke Senior has been deposed by his own brother and is living rough in the Forest of Arden, and this speech is him talking himself into liking it — three lines earlier he says “Sweet are the uses of adversity.” The famous sentence is the punchline of an argument that exile beats the court, delivered by a man with every reason to need the argument to be true.

The thought itself has an older pedigree: Bernard of Clairvaux wrote in a twelfth-century letter that “Trees and stones will teach you what you cannot learn from masters” ↗. Shakespeare's version is the one that stuck, largely because of the sound of it — books/brooks, sermons/stones — which is also why it survives being ripped out of the play and pasted onto calendars.

A consolation speech, not a nature hymn.

What the 1623 Folio actually prints

The First Folio sets the passage as “And this our life exempt from publike haunt, / Findes tongues in trees, bookes in the running brookes, / Sermons in stones, and good in euery thing.” Everything modern editors do to it is spelling and punctuation; the words are the Folio's.

Modern editions differ only in trivia: most print “everything” as one word where the Folio has “euery thing,” and editors supply the comma after “life.” No word of the sentence is an editorial guess.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Wisdom Simplicity Knowledge

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Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

As You Like It, act 2, scene 1 — Folger Shakespearefolger.edu

The scene in a modern scholarly edition; Duke Senior's opening speech contains the lines verbatim.
First Folio (1623) text of the sceneinternetshakespeare.uvic.ca

Original-spelling Folio text: “Findes tongues in trees, bookes in the running brookes.”
As You Like It: Textual Introductioninternetshakespeare.uvic.ca

States the play was never published in quarto and that the 1623 Folio is the sole authority for the text.
As You Like It — full textgutenberg.org

Public-domain complete play; the passage appears in act 2, scene 1.
As You Like It — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Lists the passage under Act II, scene i, attributed to Duke Senior.
Act II, scene 1 with line numbersopensourceshakespeare.org

Searchable text of the scene showing the three lines consecutively in the Duke's speech.

The true author

Who wrote it

William Shakespeare

1564–1616 · English playwright, poet & actor

Shakespeare wrote roughly three dozen plays and 154 sonnets while working as an actor and shareholder in the company that became the King's Men. As You Like It is one of the pastoral comedies of his middle period, and about half his plays — this one included — survive only because his colleagues gathered them into the 1623 First Folio seven years after his death. He is also the single most magnetic name in quotation culture, which makes the lines that are demonstrably his worth marking clearly.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

William Shakespeare, As You Like It, act 2, scene 1 — first printed in the First Folio (1623), the play's sole authoritative text; modern-spelling text as in the Folger Shakespeare edition.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every thing’?” Last verified 4 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/and-this-our-life-exempt-from-public-haunt-finds-tongues-in/

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