Hamlet

Famous quotes

• Some say that ever ’gainst that season comes
  Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
  The bird of dawning singeth all night long;
  And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,
  The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,
  No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm;
  So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.

  Act I, Scene I, spoken by MarcellusIn context

  • Christmas

• But look, the morn in russet mantle clad,
  Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastward hill.

  Act I, Scene I, spoken by HoratioIn context

  • Nature

• Thou know’st ’tis common, all that lives must die,
  Passing through nature to eternity.

  Act I, Scene II, spoken by QueenIn context

  • Life & Death

• Seems, madam! Nay, it is; I know not seems.

  Act I, Scene II, spoken by HamletIn context

  • Truth & Lies

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

  Act I, Scene II, spoken by HamletIn context

  • Emotion

• O that this too too solid flesh would melt,
  Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!

  Act I, Scene II, spoken by HamletIn context

  • Emotion

• How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
  Seem to me all the uses of this world!

  Act I, Scene II, spoken by HamletIn context

  • Emotion
  • Life & Death

• In my mind’s eye, Horatio.

  Act I, Scene II, spoken by HamletIn context

  • Thinking

• He was a man, take him for all in all,
  I shall not look upon his like again.

  Act I, Scene II, spoken by HamletIn context

  • Character

• A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.

  Act I, Scene II, spoken by HoratioIn context

  • Anger
  • Emotion

• Do not as some ungracious pastors do,
  Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
  Whilst like a puff’d and reckless libertine
  Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
  And recks not his own rede.

  Act I, Scene III, spoken by OpheliaIn context

  • Advice
  • Morality

• Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.

  Act I, Scene III, spoken by PoloniusIn context

  • Advice

• Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.

  Act I, scene iii.In context

  • Advice
  • Talking

• Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
  But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy:
  For the apparel oft proclaims the man

  Act I, Scene III, spoken by PoloniusIn context

  • Advice

• Neither a borrower nor a lender be:
  For loan oft loses both itself and friend

  Act I, Scene III, spoken by PoloniusIn context

  • Advice
  • Friendship
  • Money

• 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.

  Act I, scene iii.In context

  • Truth & Lies

• And to my mind, though I am native here,
  And to the manner born, it is a custom
  More honour’d in the breach than the observance.

  Act I, Scene IV, spoken by HamletIn context

• Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

  Act I, Scene IV, spoken by MarcellusIn context

  • Government

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

  Act I, Scene V, spoken by GhostIn context

  • Good & Evil

• That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain!

  Act I, Scene V, spoken by HamletIn context

  • Good & Evil
  • Truth & Lies

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

  Act I, scene v.In context

  • Philosophy

• The time is out of joint. O cursed spite,
  That ever I was born to set it right.

  Act I, Scene V, spoken by HamletIn context

  • Responsibility
  • Time

• Brevity is the soul of wit

  Act II, Scene II, spoken by PoloniusIn context

  • Talking
  • Wisdom

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

  Act II, Scene II, spoken by PoloniusIn context

  • Love

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

  Act II, scene ii.In context

  • Good & Evil
  • Thinking

• What a piece of work is 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

  Act II, Scene II, spoken by HamletIn context

  • Philosophy

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

  Act II, Scene II, spoken by HamletIn context

• Use every man after his desert, and who should ’scape whipping?

  Act II, Scene II, spoken by HamletIn context

  • Justice

• What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
  That he should weep for her?

  Act II, Scene II, spoken by HamletIn context

  • Acting

• The play’s the thing
  Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.

  Act II, Scene II, spoken by HamletIn context

  • Acting

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

  Act III, scene i.In context

  • Life & Death

• The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn
  No traveller returns

  Act III, Scene I, spoken by HamletIn context

  • Life & Death

• Nymph, in thy orisons
  Be all my sins remember’d.

  Act III, Scene I, spoken by HamletIn context

  • Prayer

• Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.

  Act III, Scene I, spoken by OpheliaIn context

  • Charity

• The lady protests too much, methinks.

  Act III, Scene II, spoken by QueenIn context

  • Truth & Lies
  • Women

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

  Act III, Scene III, spoken by KingIn context

  • Prayer

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

  Act IV, Scene V, spoken by OpheliaIn context

  • Change
  • Character

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

  Act IV, Scene V, spoken by KingIn context

  • Emotion

• I lov’d Ophelia; forty thousand brothers
  Could not, with all their quantity of love,
  Make up my sum.

  Act V, Scene I, spoken by HamletIn context

  • Love

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

  Act V, Scene II, spoken by HamletIn context

  • God

• There’s a 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.

  Act V, Scene II, spoken by HamletIn context

  • God
  • Life & Death

• The rest is silence.

  Act V, Scene II, spoken by HamletIn context

  • Life & Death

Contents