Hamlet Quotes
Spying
"Give thy thoughts no tongue, nor any unproportioned thought his act... And to thine own self be true..." "Make inquired of his behaviour... Inquire me first what Danksters are in Paris... your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth... By indirections find directions out." (To Rosencratz and Guildenstern) "The need we have to use you did provoke our hasty sending. Something have you heard of Hamlet's transformation... I entreat you both that... by your companies to draw him on to pleasures, and to gather so much as from occasion you may glean..." "But we both obey, and here give ourselves in the full bent to lay our service freely at your feet, to be commanded.' "I did enact Julius Caesar. I was killed i'th'Capitol. Brutus killed me." "Behind the arras I'll convey myself to hear this process. I'll warrant she'll tax him home." "How now? A rat? Dead for a ducat, dead!" "O, I am slain!" "Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool farewell! I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune." "There's letters sealed, and my two schoolfellows... bear the mandate. They must marshal me... to knavery. But I will delve one yard below their Mines and blow them at the moon." "To tell him that his commandment is fulfilled, that Rosencratz and Guildenstern are dead."
Women
"Like Niobe, all tears, why she, even she - O God, a beast who has no discourse for reason would have mourned longer... almost as bad, good mother, as kill a king and marry with his brother... Ha! Have you eyes? You cannot call it love... O shame, where is thy blush?... I must be cruel only to be kind" "His greatness weighed, his will is not his own. For he himself is subject to his birth... Or lose you heart, or your chaste treasure open to his unmastered importunity." "I would not... have you... to give words or talk with Lord Hamlet." "I shall obey, my lord." "My lord, I came to see your father's funeral." "I prithee do not mock me, fellow-student. I think it was to see my mother's wedding." "Why, would she hang on him as if increase of appetite had grown by what it fed on. And yet within a month... Frailty, thy name is woman... O most pernicious woman!" "Hamlet, thou hast thou father much offended." "Mother, you have my father much offended." "You are the Queen, your husband's brother's wife. And, would it were not so, you are my mother." "I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers Could not with all their quantity of love make up my sum... Show me what thou't do. Woo't weep?... fight?... fast?... tear thyself?... drink up eisel? Eat a crocodile? I'll do't. Dost thou come here to whine. To outface me with leaping in her grave? Be buried quick with her, and so will I."
Religion, Honour and Revenge (Action vs. Inaction)
"Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder... this most foul, strange and unnatural... The serpent that did sting thy father's life now wears his crown... If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not. Let not the royal bed of Denmark be a couch for luxury and damnéd incest..." "Remember thee? Yea, from the table of my memory I'll wipe away all trivial fond records, all saws of books, all pressures past... And thy commandment all alone shall live within the book and volume of my brain, unmixed with baser matter. Yes, by heaven! O villain, villain, smiling, damnéd villain!... That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain. At least I am sure it may be so in Denmark... So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word: It is 'Adieu, adieu, remember me.'" "O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!... Am I a coward? Who calls me 'villain'? Breaks my pate across?... Who does me this?... I should take it... I am pigeon livered and lack gall... Bloody, bawdy villain! Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindness villain! O, vengeance! Why, what an ass am I... That I, the son of a dear father murdered, prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell must, like a *****, unpack my heart with words and fall a-cursing... About my brains. Hum - I have heard that guilty creatures sitting at a play have by the very cunning of the scene... have proclaimed their malefactions. For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak with most miraculous organ... The play's the thing by which I'll catch the conscience of the King." "O good Horatio, I'll take the ghosts word for a thousand pound." "'Tis now the very witching time of night when churchyards yawn... Now could I drink hot blood and do such bitter business as the day would quake to look on. Soft, now onto my mother... The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom... I will speak daggers to her, but use none, my tongue and soul in this be hypocrites..." "Now might I do it pat, now 'a is a-praying and now I'll do't. And so 'a goes to heaven and so am I revenged... Why this is hire and salary, not revenge. 'A took my father grossly, full of bread... to take him in the purging of his soul, when he is fit and seasoned for passage? No... Drunk asleep... in his rage... or in th'incestuous pleasures of his bed.. some act that has no relish of salvation in't - then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven. And that his soul be damned and black as hell, whereto it goes." "O, my offence is rank. It smells to heaven. It hath the primal eldest curse upon't, a brother's murder... Since I am still possessed of those effects for which I did the murder, my crown, mine own ambition, and my Queen." "My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go." "By letters congruing to that effect, the present death of Hamlet. Do it, England. For like the hectic in my blood he rages, and thou must cure me." "Now, sir, young Fortinbras, of unimproved mettle hot and full... but to recover of us by strong hand... those foresaid lands so by his father lost." "Rightly to be great is not to stir without great argument, but greatly to quarrel in a straw when honour's at the stake. How stand I then, that have a father killed, a mother stained... let all sleep, while to my shame I see the imminent death of twenty thousand men... go to their graves like beds." "O from this time forth, my thoughts be bloody or nothing worth!" (After forcing Claudius to drink) "Here, thou incestuous, murderous damnéd Dane, Drink off this potion." "What would you undertake to show yourself in deed your father's son more than in words?" "To cut his throat i'th'church!" "No place, indeed, should murder sanctuarise... revenge should have no bounds." "Why, as a woodcock to mine own spring, Osrick, I am justly killed with mine own treachery... The King, the King's to blame."
Appearance vs. Reality
"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark..." "Why seems it so particular with thee?" "'Seems', madam? Nay, it is. I know not 'seems'... As I... shall think meet to put an antic disposition on... "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't..." "I did love you once... Get thee to a nunnery... I have heard of your paintings too... God hath given you one face and you make yourselves another... It hath made me mad. I say we will have no more marriage..."
Fate vs. Free Will
"The time is out of joint. O, curséd spite, that ever I was born to set it right!" "Not a whit, we defy augury. There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come - the readiness is all."" "On Fortune's cap we are not the very button." "Nor the soles of her shoe?... Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favours?" "In the secret parts of Fortune?" "O, most true! She is a strumpet... Denmark's a prison... For there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison." "Our indiscretion sometimes serve us well when our deep plots do pall, and that should learn us there's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will..."
Nihilism
"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 - To sleep - perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub... But that the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns, puzzles the will... thus conscience does make cowards of us all..." "Or that the everlasting had not fixed His canon 'gainst self-slaughter... Fie, 'tis an unweeded garden... O, most wicked speed, to post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets!... but break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue." (Holding Yorick's skull) "A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath bore me on his back a thousand times... Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not oft of. Where be your gibes now?... Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth to dust... why of that loam whereto he was converted might they not stop a beer barrel? Imperious Ceasar, dead and turned to clay, might stop a hole to keep the wind away."
Hamlet as a Man
"Together with all forms, moods, shapes of fried, that can denote me truly... they are actions that a man might play. But I have that within which passes show - these but trappings and the suits of woe." "O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword, Th' expectancy and the rose of the fair state..." "Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet Prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!" "Bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage. For he was likely, had he been put on, to have proved most royal. And for his passage the soldiers' music and the rites of war speak loudly for him."
Humanism
"What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, 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? Man delights not me. No, nor woman neither..." "What is a man if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more... Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do' Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means to do't." (To Horatio) "For thou hast been as one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing, a man that fortune's buffets and rewards hast ta'en with equal thanks... Give me that man that is not passion's slave, and I will wear him... in my heart of heart, as I do thee." "As th' art a man, give me the cup. O God, Horatio, what a wounded name... If thou didst ever hold me in by heart... draw thy breath in pain, to tell my story."
