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Who really said it

The robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief

Written by William Shakespeare 1564–1616 · English playwright & poet
Verified Free to reuse

Genuinely Shakespeare’s. The line is spoken by the Duke of Venice in ‘Othello’, Act 1, Scene 3, consoling Brabantio — confirmed against the Folger and MIT texts. The popular form is just the modern spelling of the original “The robb’d that smiles…”

Last verified 16 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“The robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief” — William Shakespeare, Othello, Act 1, Scene 3 (the Duke of Venice)

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Provenance

The source

Work
Othello, Act 1, Scene 3
Speaker
The Duke of Venice (to Brabantio)
Written
c. 1603–04
First printed
Quarto 1622; First Folio 1623

The robb’d that smiles, steals something from the thief;
He robs himself that spends a bootless grief. Othello, 1.3

The popular one-line quotation is the first half of this rhymed couplet, given modern spelling (“robbed” for “robb’d”). “Bootless” means futile or useless.

Read the scene at the Folger Shakespeare Library

How we verified this

  • Confirmed verbatim in the Folger Shakespeare Library text of Othello, Act 1, Scene 3, in the Duke of Venice’s speech.
  • Independently confirmed against the MIT Shakespeare edition, which shows the same couplet ending “…spends a bootless grief.”
  • The line is part of a set of rhymed “sentences” the Duke offers Brabantio, who feels robbed of his daughter Desdemona by Othello.
Public domain

Othello was written c. 1603–04 and first printed in a 1622 quarto and the 1623 First Folio — centuries before the 1931 U.S. copyright threshold. Shakespeare’s original text is firmly in the public domain; only particular modern editions’ annotations or apparatus may carry their own copyright.

Fact-check

Often misattributed

The author here is genuine — this really is Shakespeare. The common slips are about who in the play says it, and about the quotation being trimmed.

“Othello” the character speaker mix-up

Many quote sites label the line “Shakespeare, Othello” in a way that implies Othello himself speaks it. In fact it is the Duke of Venice, consoling Brabantio in Act 1, Scene 3 — well before Othello’s own tragedy unfolds.

The trimmed single line truncation

The popular quotation stops at “…steals something from the thief,” but Shakespeare wrote it as a rhymed couplet: “He robs himself that spends a bootless grief.” The modern spelling “robbed” also replaces the original elided “robb’d.”

The attribution to Shakespeare is correct — the line is the Duke of Venice’s in Othello, Act 1, Scene 3, quoted in modern spelling and usually shorn of its second line.

Context

Why it mattered

In the scene, Brabantio has just lost the fight to keep his daughter Desdemona from Othello. The Duke, unable to reverse the marriage, offers a string of consoling maxims — and this couplet is one of them: a victim who meets loss with a smile denies the thief the pleasure of his grief, while endless mourning only robs the mourner further.

Brabantio, unpersuaded, retorts that such tidy sayings are cold comfort — “these sentences… are equivocal” — which is part of why the line reads as proverbial wisdom lifted cleanly out of its dramatic context.

The robb’d that smiles, steals something from the thief.

Explore

Filed under

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

Resilience Wisdom Character

Go further

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.

Othello, Act 1 Scene 3 — Folger Shakespeare Libraryfolger.edu

Authoritative edited text of the scene containing the line, with the Duke as speaker.
Othello 1.3 — MIT Shakespeareshakespeare.mit.edu

Full-text scene confirming the couplet and its wording independently.
Othello — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Sourced quotations from the play, including the Duke's lines in Act 1, Scene 3.
Othello, Act I Scene 3 — Open Source Shakespeareopensourceshakespeare.org

Line-numbered concordance text of the scene for cross-checking the couplet.

The author

About William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

1564–1616 · English playwright & poet

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language. Othello, his tragedy of jealousy and manipulation, was written around 1603–04 and first printed in a 1622 quarto and the 1623 First Folio. This line belongs not to Othello himself but to the Duke of Venice, who offers it as consolation early in the play.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

William Shakespeare, Othello, Act 1, Scene 3, in The Norton Shakespeare / Folger Shakespeare Library edition (first printed Quarto 1622; First Folio 1623).

MLA (9th ed.)

Shakespeare, William. Othello. Act 1, Scene 3.

APA (7th ed.)

Shakespeare, W. (1623). Othello.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief’?” Last verified 16 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-robbed-that-smiles-steals-something-from-the-thief

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