William Shakespeare - Hamlet

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Neither a borrower, nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
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.

William Shakespeare
Why, let the stricken deer go weep,
The hart ungalled play;
For some must watch, while some must sleep:
So runs the world away.

William Shakespeare
Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;
And now I'll do 't: and so he goes to heaven;
And so I am reveng'd.

William Shakespeare
O! it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters … I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant. It out-Herods Herod. Pray you, avoid it.

William Shakespeare
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across? Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face?

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

William Shakespeare
But in the gross and scope of my opinion,
This bodes some strange eruption to our state.

William Shakespeare
Polonius: My honourable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you.
Hamlet: You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will more willingly part withal; except my life, except my life, except my life.

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

William Shakespeare
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
The observ'd of all observers!

William Shakespeare
There's hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year.

William Shakespeare
One fair daughter and no more,
The which he loved passing well.

William Shakespeare
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules.

William Shakespeare
There with fantastic garlands did she come,
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them.

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

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

William Shakespeare
Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but, being in,
Bear 't that th' opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man.

William Shakespeare
Has this fellow no feeling of his business, that he sings at grave-making?

William Shakespeare
Leave her to heaven,
And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge,
To prick and sting her.

William Shakespeare
Unhand me, gentlemen,
By heaven! I'll make a ghost of him that lets me.

William Shakespeare
What may this mean,
That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous; and we fools of nature
So horridly to shake our disposition
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?

William Shakespeare
Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.

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

William Shakespeare
Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

William Shakespeare
Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not that flattering unction to your soul.

William Shakespeare
Hamlet: Lady, shall I lie in your lap? Ophelia: No, my lord. Hamlet: DId you think I meant country matters? Ophelia: I think nothing, my lord. Hamlet: That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs. Ophelia: What is, my lord? Hamlet: Nothing.

William Shakespeare
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.

William Shakespeare
Nay, an thou'lt mouth,
I'll rant as well as thou.

William Shakespeare
O! that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew;
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter!

William Shakespeare
Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature; for anything 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.

William Shakespeare