Best Quotes from Hamlet by William Shakespeare with Page Numbers

For this relief much thanks: 'tis bitter cold, And I am sick at heart.

What think you on't?

Before my God, I might not this believe Without the sensible and true avouch Of mine own eyes.

'Tis strange.

A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye.

Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows.

I charge thee, speak!

What might be toward, that this sweaty haste Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day.

Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour, With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.

This bodes some strange eruption to our state.

Giving to you no further personal power To business with the king, more than the scope Of these delated articles allow.

All that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity.

But I have that within which passeth show; These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

That it should come to this!

O, most wicked speed, to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!

Frailty, thy name is woman!

I shall not look upon his like again.

Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles me.

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

Foul deeds will rise, Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes.

My necessaries are embark'd: farewell.

Think it no more; For nature, crescent, does not grow alone.

Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister.

Virtue itself 'scapes not calumnious strokes.

Best safety lies in fear: Youth to itself rebels.

As watchman to my heart.

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.

Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.

This above all: to thine ownself be true.

And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.

This heavy-headed revel east and west Makes us traduced and tax'd of other nations.

Their virtues else–be they as pure as grace, As infinite as man may undergo– Shall in the general censure take corruption From that particular fault.

The dram of eale Doth all the noble substance of a doubt To his own scandal.

I do not set my life in a pin's fee; And for my soul, what can it do to that, Being a thing immortal as itself?

My fate cries out, And makes each petty artery in this body As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve.

Angels and ministers of grace defend us!

What may this mean, That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon?

It will not speak; then I will follow it.

What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord, Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff?

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Mark me.

Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing To what I shall unfold.

Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

Murder most foul, as in the best it is; But this most foul, strange and unnatural.

Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as swift As meditation or the thoughts of love, May sweep to my revenge.

The serpent that did sting thy father's life Now wears his crown.

O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible!

Let not the royal bed of Denmark be A couch for luxury and damned incest.

Remember thee! Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat In this distracted globe.

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

To be, or not to be: that is the question.

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

This above all: to thine own self be true.

Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty!

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.

All that glitters is not gold.

"For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god kissing carrion, – Have you a daughter?"

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

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me it is a prison."

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

"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!"

"This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air... why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours."

"The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king."

"What would he do, had he the motive and the cue for passion that I have?"

"Am I a coward?"

"'Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods, In general synod 'take away her power; Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel, And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven, As low as to the fiends!'"

To be, or not to be: that is the question.

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause.

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.

There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.

Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?

I loved you once.

What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven?

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

The harlot's cheek, beautied with plastering art, is not more ugly to the thing that helps it than is my deed to my most painted word.

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

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special o'erstep not the modesty of nature.

For anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end is to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature.

That fortune is love, and fortune love.

Give me that man that is not passion's slave and I will wear him in my heart's core.

I do believe you think what now you speak... Purpose is but the slave to memory.

The violence of either grief or joy their own enactures with themselves destroy.

Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers... get me a fellowship in a cry of players?

So runs the world away.

O, but she'll keep her word.

Now could I drink hot blood, and do such bitter business as the day would quake to look on.

I like him not, nor stands it safe with us to let his madness range.

Most holy and religious fear it is to keep those many many bodies safe that live and feed upon your majesty.

The single and peculiar life is bound, with all the strength and armour of the mind, to keep itself from noyance.

But much more that spirit upon whose weal depend and rest the lives of many.

Never alone did the king sigh, but with a general groan.

My offence is rank, it smells to heaven; it hath the primal eldest curse upon't, a brother's murder.

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?

Then I'll look up; my fault is past. But, O, what form of prayer can serve my turn?

O wretched state! O bosom black as death!

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

You are the queen, your husband's brother's wife; And–would it were not so! –you are my mother.

Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge; You go not till I set you up a glass Where you may see the inmost part of you.

Leave wringing of your hands: peace! sit you down, And let me wring your heart; for so I shall, If it be made of penetrable stuff.

Confess yourself to heaven; Repent what's past; avoid what is to come.

Good night: but go not to mine uncle's bed; Assume a virtue, if you have it not.

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

What devil was't That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman-blind?

O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.

I do repent: but heaven hath pleased it so, To punish me with this and this with me, That I must be their scourge and minister.

For in the fatness of these pursy times Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg.

There's matter in these sighs, these profound heaves: You must translate: 'tis fit we understand them.

Ah, my good lord, what have I seen to-night!

Mad as the sea and wind, when both contend Which is the mightier.

O heavy deed! It had been so with us, had we been there.

His liberty is full of threats to all; To you yourself, to us, to every one.

But so much was our love, We would not understand what was most fit.

To keep it from divulging, let it feed Even on the pith of Life.

He weeps for what is done.

We must, with all our majesty and skill, Both countenance and excuse.

My soul is full of discord and dismay.

Compounded it with dust, whereto 'tis kin.

That I can keep your counsel and not mine own.

What replication should be made by the son of a king?

He keeps them, like an ape, in the corner of his jaw.

When he needs what you have gleaned, it is but squeezing you.

A knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.

The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body.

The king is a thing… of nothing.

It is but squeezing you, and, sponge, you shall be dry again.

Hide fox, and all after.

To bear all smooth and even, This sudden sending him away must seem Deliberate pause.

Diseases desperate grown By desperate appliance are relieved, Or not at all.

A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.

Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table: that's the end.

I see a cherub that sees them.

Man and wife is one flesh; and so, my mother.

What dost you mean by this?

Follow him at foot; tempt him with speed aboard; Delay it not; I'll have him hence to-night.

England, if my love thou hold'st at aught– As my great power thereof may give thee sense.

For like the hectic in my blood he rages, And thou must cure me.

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 god-like reason To fust in us unused.

Rightly to be great Is not to stir without great argument, But greatly to find quarrel in a straw When honour's at stake.

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

Examples gross as earth exhort me: Witness this army of such mass and charge Led by a delicate and tender prince.

His spirit with divine ambition puff'd Makes mouths at the invisible event, Exposing what is mortal and unsure To all that fortune, death and danger dare.

How stand I then, That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd, Excitements of my reason and my blood, And let all sleep?

For a fantasy and trick of fame, Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause.

That inward breaks, and shows no cause without Why the man dies.

Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats Will not debate the question of this straw.

Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?

What would she have?

The unshaped use of it doth move The hearers to collection.

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

Nature is fine in love, and where 'tis fine, It sends some precious instance of itself After the thing it loves.

There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember.

Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself, She turns to favour and to prettiness.

No, no, he is dead: Go to thy death-bed: He never will come again.

All flaxen was his poll: He is gone, he is gone.

God be wi' ye.

Let the king have the letters I have sent; and repair thou to me with as much speed as thou wouldst fly death.

I have words to speak in thine ear will make thee dumb; yet are they much too light for the bore of the matter.

These good fellows will bring thee where I am.

I alone became their prisoner. They have dealt with me like thieves of mercy.

He shall, sir, an't please him. There's a letter for you, sir.

I do not know from what part of the world I should be greeted, if not from Lord Hamlet.

Post haste; provide the means to the king.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern hold their course for England: of them I have much to tell thee.

Come, I will make you way for these your letters.

Farewell. He that thou knowest thine, HAMLET.

The other motive, why to a public count I might not go, is the great love the general gender bear him.

A sister driven into desperate terms, whose worth, if praises may go back again, stood challenger on mount of all the age for her perfections.

Break not your sleeps for that: you must not think that we are made of stuff so flat and dull.

Love is begun by time; and that I see, in passages of proof, time qualifies the spark and fire of it.

For goodness, growing to a plurisy, dies in his own too much.

Thus didest thou.

Revenge should have no bounds.

I'll touch my point with this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly, it may be death.

What would you undertake, to show yourself your father's son in deed more than in words?

The woman will be out.

For, though I am not splenitive and rash, Yet have I something in me dangerous, Which let thy wiseness fear: hold off thy hand.

What wilt thou do for her?

I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers Could not, with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum.

Why, e'en so: and now my Lady Worm's; chapless, and knocked about the mazzard with a sexton's spade: here's fine revolution, an we had the trick to see't.

To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till he find it stopping a bung-hole?

That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once: how the knave jowls it to the ground.

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.

All that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity.

'Tis e'en so: the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense.

In youth, when I did love, did love, Methought it was very sweet.

Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well.

There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will.

The readiness is all.

What is't to leave betimes? Let be!

If Hamlet from himself be ta'en away...Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it.

Mine and my father's death come not upon thee, Nor thine on me.

O, I could tell you – But let it be.

Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane, Drink off this potion.

Take up the bodies: such a sight as this Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.

He was likely, had he been put on, To have proved most royally.