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course of true love never ran smoothly, the

course of true love never ran smoothly, the idiom

Lovers often face difficulties, as in Every time he tells me that he and his wife are fighting, I say the same thing—you know about the course of true love. The full term is a quotation from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1:1): “The course of true love never did run smooth.” Over the years it has become so familiar that today it is often shortened, as in the example.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 2003, 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.