All Quotes

"A countenance more in sorrow than in anger."

"If it assume my noble father's person, I'll speak to it though Hell itself should gape And bid me hold my peace."

"Give it an understanding, but no tongue."

"My father's spirit in arms! all is not well; I doubt some foul play: would the night were come! Till then sit still, my soul: foul deeds will rise, Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes."

"For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favour, Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood, A violet in the youth of primy nature, Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting, The perfume and suppliance of a minute; No more."

"Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven, Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine, Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, And recks not his own rede."

"Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar."

"Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice; Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment."

"Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy; For the apparel oft proclaims the man,"

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend,"

"This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man."

"But to my mind, — though I am native here And to the manner born, — it is a custom More honour'd in the breach than the observance."

"Why, what should be the fear? I do not set my life at a pin's fee; And for my soul, what can it do to that, Being a thing immortal as itself?"

"O most pernicious woman! O, villain, villain, smiling, damned villain! My tables, — meet it is I set it down, That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain."

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

"How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself — As I perchance hereafter shall think meet To put an antic disposition on."

"The time is out of joint; O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right!"

"Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief."

"More matter with less art."

"That he is mad, 'tis true; 'tis true 'tis pity; And pity 'tis 'tis true: a foolish figure; But farewell it, for I will use no art."

"Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love."

"Polonius: Do you know me, my lord? Hamlet: Excellent well; you're a fishmonger. Polonius: Not I, my lord. Hamlet Then I would you were so honest a man. Polonius: Honest, my lord! Hamlet: Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand. Polonius: That's very true, my lord. Hamlet: [Reads] For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god kissing carrion, — Have you a daughter? Polonius: I have, my lord. Hamlet: Let her not walk i' the sun: conception is a blessing: but not as your daughter may conceive; — friend, look to 't. Polonius: [Aside] How say you by that? Still harping on my daughter: — yet he knew me not at first; he said I was a fishmonger: he is far gone, far gone: and truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for love; very near this."

"Polonius: What do you read, my lord? Hamlet: Words, words, words."

"Polonius: [Aside] Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't. — Will you walk out of the air, my lord? Hamlet: Into my grave."

"Polonius: My honored lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you. Hamlet: You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal — except my life — except my life — except my life."

"Hamlet: My excellent good friends! How dost thou Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do you both? Rosencrantz: As indifferent as children of the earth. Guildenstern: Happy in that we are not overhappy; on Fortune's cap we are not the very button. Hamlet: Nor the soles of her shoe? Rosencrantz: Neither, my lord. Hamlet: Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favours? Guildenstern: Faith, her privates we. Hamlet: In the secret parts of Fortune? O, most true! She is a strumpet. What's the news? Rosencrantz: None, my lord, but that the world's grown honest. Hamlet: Then is doomsday near."

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

"I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams."

"Which dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream."

"Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks."

"I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises, and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory. This most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me then a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me; no, nor woman neither, though, by your smiling, you seem to say so."

"Use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping?"

"O! what a rogue and peasant slave am I!"

"What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her?"

"That I, the son of a dear father murdered, Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, Must like a whore unpack my heart with words, and fall a-cursing like a very drab"

"The spirit that I have seen May be the devil: and the devil hath power To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps Out of my weakness and my melancholy, As he is very potent with such spirits, Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds More relative than this: the play's the thing Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king."

"I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw."

"We are oft to blame in this, — 'Tis too much prov'd, — that with devotion's visage, And pious action, we do sugar o'er The devil himself."

"Be thou assur'd, if words be made of breath, And breath of life, I have no life to breathe What thou hast said to me."

"So, haply, slander — Whose whisper o'er the world's diameter, As level as the cannon to his blank, Transports his poisoned shot — may miss our name And hit the woundless air. — O, come away! My soul is full of discord and dismay."

"To be, or not to be, — that is the question: — Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? — To die, to sleep, — No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, — 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; — To sleep, perchance to dream: — ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would these fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, — The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn No traveller returns, — puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know naught of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; And enterprises of great pith and moment, With this regard, their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action."

"Soft you now! The fair Ophelia! — Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remember'd."

"Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me. I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves all; believe none of us."

"Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind."

"I say, we will have no more marriages: those that are married already, — all but one, — shall live; the rest shall keep as they are."

"O! what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!"

"O, woe is me To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!"

"Madness in great ones must not unwatched go."

"Gertrude: Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me. Hamlet: No, good mother, here's metal more attractive. [Hamlet takes a place near Ophelia.]"

"Hamlet: Lady, shall I lie in your lap? Ophelia: No, my lord. Hamlet: I mean, my head upon your lap? Ophelia: Ay, my lord. Hamlet: Do you think I meant country matters?"