POLONIUS: My lord, I will use them according to their desert.
HAMLET: God's bodikin, man, much better. Use every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping?
Hamlet, II, ii
HAMLET: Use them after your own honour and dignity: the less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.
Hamlet, II, ii
HAMLET: What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her?
Hamlet, II, ii
HAMLET: For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ.
Hamlet, II, ii
HAMLET: The play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.
Hamlet, II, ii
HAMLET: To be, or not to be: that is the question.
Hamlet, III, i
HAMLET: 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.
Hamlet, III, i
HAMLET: 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.
Hamlet, III, i
HAMLET: 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.
Hamlet, III, i
HAMLET: 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?
Hamlet, III, i
HAMLET: 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?
Hamlet, III, i
HAMLET: Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.
Hamlet, III, i
OPHELIA: Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
Hamlet, III, i
HAMLET: Get thee to a nunnery.
Hamlet, III, i
HAMLET: What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us.
Hamlet, III, i
HAMLET: I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nick-name God's creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance.
Hamlet, III, i
OPHELIA: O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
Hamlet, III, i
CLAUDIUS: Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go.
Hamlet, III, i
HAMLET: Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to
you, trippingly on the tongue.
Hamlet, III, ii
HAMLET: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.
Hamlet, III, ii
HAMLET: Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature.
Hamlet, III, ii
HAMLET: For any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.
Hamlet, III, ii
HAMLET: Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee.
Hamlet, III, ii
HAMLET: Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
OPHELIA: No, my lord.
HAMLET: I mean, my head upon your lap?
OPHELIA: Ay, my lord.
Hamlet, III, ii
HAMLET: Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?
OPHELIA: 'Tis brief, my lord.
HAMLET: As woman's love.
Hamlet, III, ii
PLAYER QUEEN: Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;
Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.
Hamlet, III, ii
PLAYER KING: Purpose is but the slave to memory.
Hamlet, III, ii
GERTRUDE: The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
Hamlet, III, ii
HORATIO: You might have rhymed.
Hamlet, III, ii
HAMLET: You would play upon me, you would seem to know my stops, you would pluck out the heart of my mystery, you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass, and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ; yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me.
Hamlet, III, ii
HAMLET: For some must watch, while some must sleep:
So runs the world away.
Hamlet, III, ii
HAMLET: 'Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world.
Hamlet, III, ii
ROSENCRANTZ: The cess of majesty
Dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw
What's near it with it.
Hamlet, III, iii
CLAUDIUS: In the corrupted currents of this world
Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law: but 'tis not so above.
Hamlet, III, iii
GERTRUDE: This is the very coinage of your brain.
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.
Hamlet, III, iv
HAMLET: I must be cruel, only to be kind.
Hamlet, III, iv
HAMLET: Let it work.
For 'tis the sport to have the engineer
Hoist with his own petard, and 't shall go hard.
Hamlet, III, iv
CLAUDIUS: What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet?
GERTRUDE: Mad as the sea and wind, when both contend
Which is the mightier.
Hamlet, IV, i