Hamlet Quotes

“To die, to sleep - To sleep, perchance to dream - ay, there’s the rub, For in this sleep of death what dreams may come...”

“Sweets to the sweet.”

“The Play’s the Thing, wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.”

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

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

“Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.”

“Brevity is the soul of wit.”

“My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go.”

“When sorrows come, they come not single spies. But in battalions!”

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

“I must be cruel only to be kind; Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.”

“Words, words, words.”

“I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum.”

“To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.”

“I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.”

“Conscience doth make cowards of us all.”

“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 than 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 and 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?”

“One may smile, and smile, and be a villain. ”

“This above all: to thine own self be true.”

“Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince; And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. ”

“God hath given you one face, and you make yourself another.”

“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”

“The rest, is silence.”

“The Devil hath power To assume a pleasing shape.”

“You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will more willingly part withal: except my life, except my life, except my life.”

“Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be.”

“Lord Polonius: What do you read, my lord? Hamlet: Words, words, words. Lord Polonius: What is the matter, my lord? Hamlet: Between who? Lord Polonius: I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.”

“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.”

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

“Listen to many, speak to a few.”

“Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.”

“If we are true to ourselves, we can not be false to anyone.”

“So full of artless jealousy is guilt, It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.”

“Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting That would not let me sleep.”

“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 despised 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 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 not 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!”