William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Quotes

• The play's the thing
  Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

• 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 heartache and the thousand natural shocks
  That flesh is heir to,--'t is 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.

• Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go.

• I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another.

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

• The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

• Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?
  Polonius: By the 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.

• O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven;
  It hath the primal eldest curse upon 't,
  A brother's murder.

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

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

• For 'tis the sport to have the engineer
  Hoist with his own petard...

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

• Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now; your gambols, your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? Quite chap-fallen? Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come.

• A hit, a very palpable hit.

• The rest is silence.

• Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince:
  And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

• Although the last, not least.

• Nothing will come of nothing.

• How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
  To have a thankless child!

• Oh, that way madness lies; let me shun that.