Straight from today’s Quotle — here’s who really said it, and the story behind it. Play again

Who really said it

Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast

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

It is the last line of Act 2, scene 3 of Romeo and Juliet — Friar Laurence’s parting shot as Romeo hurries off to arrange his same-day wedding. The line stands in the authoritative 1599 second quarto and in every modern edition descended from it, so the wording is confirmed.

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

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Verified quote & credit

“Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast” Friar Laurence, in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, scene 3 (second quarto, 1599). Verified at quotle.info

Can you use it?

Free to use, including in commercial and paid presentations — no permission or licence needed.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of William Shakespeare — English playwright and poet. Theme: "Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The source

Work
The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet
Passage
Act 2, scene 3 — the closing two lines
Speaker
Friar Laurence, to Romeo
First printed
Quarto 2, 1599 — this passage is not in the 1597 first quarto (the play itself was first printed 1597)

ROMEO  O let us hence; I stand on sudden haste.
FRIAR LAURENCE  Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast. Act 2, scene 3

Punctuation varies by editor and the words do not: the Folger text prints periods (“Wisely and slow. They stumble that run fast.”), the Internet Shakespeare Editions’ modernised second quarto a comma, and the Project Gutenberg text the semicolon shown here.

Second quarto, 1599
Romeo and Juliet, Quarto 2 (1599) documentary edition
Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, scene 3 — Folger Shakespeare

How we checked

Public domain

Romeo and Juliet was first printed in 1597 and its authoritative second quarto issued in 1599 by Thomas Creede for Cuthbert Burby ↗, so the text is far past any copyright term in the United States. Individual modern editions carry their own editorial apparatus, but these words are Shakespeare’s and free to quote.

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

Where it goes wrong

The attribution is right — this really is Shakespeare. What gets mangled is the wording, and who in the play actually says it.

“Wisely and slowly…” variant

The –ly form is everywhere, but no early text supports it. A podcast episode built entirely on the line titles it “Wisely and slowly, they stumble that run fast” ↗, credited to Shakespeare with no play named in the title. The quarto reads slow.

Hugh Howey Goodreads

Goodreads files “Wisely and slowly; they stumble that run fast” as a quote by Hugh Howey, from Wool Omnibus ↗ — a 21st-century science-fiction novel. The words are Shakespeare’s, roughly four centuries earlier.

“Go wisely, and go slowly. Those who rush into things stumble.” modern rendering

That is a study-guide translation, not Shakespeare — it is how LitCharts renders the line into current English ↗ alongside the original. Versions of this plain-English form circulate as if they were the quotation itself.

Shakespeare, in his own voice aggregators

Quote sites strip the drama out of it. BrainyQuote gives it as “Wisely, and slow. They stumble that run fast.” with no play, scene or speaker ↗ — presenting a character’s line as the author’s maxim.

It is Friar Laurence’s, the last line of Act 2, scene 3 of Romeo and Juliet; the modernised text of the 1599 second quarto reads “Wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast” ↗.

Context

Why it mattered

Romeo has known Juliet for a matter of hours. He turns up at Friar Laurence’s cell asking to be married that same day — to a Capulet — having spent the previous scenes in mourning over a different girl. The Friar notices: “Young men’s love then lies / Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.”

He agrees anyway, and for a political reason rather than a romantic one: the match “may so happy prove / To turn your households’ rancor to pure love.” Then he sends Romeo off with a warning about speed — a warning the Friar is himself the first to ignore. The line reads as plain good sense in isolation, which is why it travels so well; in the play it is dramatic irony with a fuse on it.

They stumble that run fast.

How the text reached us

Romeo and Juliet was first printed in 1597, in a quarto long regarded as a memorial reconstruction — a text apparently pieced together from the imperfect recollections of one or two actors. The 1599 second quarto advertises itself on its title page as “Newly corrected, augmented, and amended,” runs about 800 lines longer, and is thought to derive from Shakespeare’s own draft. All later quartos, the Folio and every modern edition descend from Q2 ↗, which is where this line comes to us from.

Explore

Filed under

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

Wisdom Humility Failure

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.

Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, scene 3folger.edu

The Folger Shakespeare edition of the scene, with the line as its closing verse.
Modern text of the 1599 second quarto, 2.3internetshakespeare.uvic.ca

Peer-reviewed modernised Q2 text: “Wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast.”
Romeo and Juliet, Quarto 2 (1599)internetshakespeare.uvic.ca

The documentary edition of the 1599 quarto, with its title page transcribed.
The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet (full text)gutenberg.org

Free public-domain text carrying the exchange with the semicolon punctuation.
Parallel texts of the first two quartos, Q1 1597 – Q2 1599archive.org

P. A. Daniel’s 1874 New Shakspere Society edition, printing Q1 and Q2 side by side.
Wikiquote: Romeo and Julieten.wikiquote.org

Sourced quotation list giving the line to Friar Laurence, Act II, scene iii.

The real author

Who wrote it

William Shakespeare

1564–1616 · English playwright and poet

Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet sometime between 1591 and 1595; it reached print in 1597 and again, in a far better text, in 1599. He is also the internet’s single largest magnet for invented quotations — which makes the genuine ones worth pinning down precisely. This is one of the genuine ones: eight words handed to a friar who is about to ignore his own advice.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Cite this

William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet,” Act 2, scene 3, as printed in the second quarto (London: Thomas Creede for Cuthbert Burby, 1599); modern text, Folger Shakespeare Library.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast’?” Last verified 4 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/wisely-and-slow-they-stumble-that-run-fast/

Something wrong on this page?

Tell us what’s off. A link helps but isn’t required — “this is the wrong person” is a useful report on its own. Nothing here changes the page directly; it goes to our review queue and a human checks it.

Only used to tell you if we act on your report. We never sell or share it.

Copied