"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."

"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?"

"So long? Nay, then, let the devil wear black, for I'll have a suit of sables. Oh heavens! die two months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there's hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year."

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

"Claudius: What do you call the play? Hamlet: “The Mouse-trap.” Marry, how? Tropically: this play is the image of a murder done in Vienna; Gonzago is the duke’s name, his wife, Baptista. You shall see anon. ’Tis a knavish piece of work, but what of that? Your Majesty, and we that have free souls, it touches us not. Let the gall’d jade winch, our withers are unwrung."

"’A poisons him i’ th’ garden for his estate. His name’s Gonzago, the story is extant, and written in very choice Italian. You shall see anon how the murderer gets the love of Gonzago’s wife."

"Give me some light. Away!"

"Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me. You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me."

"Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel? Polonius: By th' Mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed. Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel. Polonius: It is backed like a weasel. Hamlet: Or like a whale. Polonius: Very like a whale."

"Tis now the very witching time of night, When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood, And do such bitter business, as the day Would quake to look on."

"Let me be cruel, not unnatural; I will speak daggers to her, but use none."

"O! my offence is rank, it smells to heaven."

"What if this cursed hand Were thicker than itself with brother's blood, — Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens To wash it white as snow?"

"Now might I do it pat, now he is praying; And now I'll do 't: and so he goes to heaven; And so am I reveng'd."

"My words fly up, my thoughts remain below; Words without thoughts never to heaven go."

"Hamlet: How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead! Polonius: Oh, I am slain!"

"Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell! I took thee for thy better."

"Nay, but to live In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love Over the nasty sty."

"I must be cruel, only to be kind: Thus bad begins and worse remains behind."

"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."

"Rosencrantz: I understand you not, my lord. Hamlet: I am glad of it: a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear. Rosencrantz: My lord, you must tell us where the body is, and go with us to the king. Hamlet: The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body. The king is a thing — Guildenstern: A thing, my lord? Hamlet: Of nothing."

"Hamlet: A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm. Claudius: What dost thou mean by this? Hamlet: Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar."

"Claudius: Where is Polonius? Hamlet: In heaven; send thither to see. If your messenger find him not there, seek him i' the other place yourself. But, indeed, if you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby."

"How all occasions do inform against me, And spur my dull revenge! What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more. Sure he that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and godlike reason To fust in us unused. Now whether it be Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple Of thinking too precisely on th' event - A thought which, quartered, hath but part wisdom And ever three parts coward - I do not know Why yet I live to say "This thing's to do," Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means To do't."

"O! from this time forth, My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!"

"We know what we are, but know not what we may be."

"Good-night, ladies; good-night, sweet ladies; good-night, good-night."

"When sorrows come, they come not single spies, But in battalions."