William Shakespeare - Hamlet

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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
And then it started like a guilty thing
Upon a fearful summons.

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

William Shakespeare
The ears are senseless that should give us hearing,
To tell him his commandment is fulfilled,
That Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are dead.

William Shakespeare
There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all Denmark, But he's an arrant knave.

William Shakespeare
Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.

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

William Shakespeare
The glowworm shows the matin to be near,
And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire.

William Shakespeare
Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral baked meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.

William Shakespeare
Blest are those Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled, That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger To sound what stop she please.

William Shakespeare
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.

William Shakespeare
He is dead and gone, lady,
He is dead and gone,
At his head a grass-green turf;
At his heels a stone.

William Shakespeare
Polonius: Do you know me, my lord?
Hamlet: Excellent well; you are a fishmonger.

William Shakespeare
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?

William Shakespeare
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.

William Shakespeare
I once did hold it, as our statists do,
A baseness to write fair.

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
His greatness weighed, his will is not his own,
For he himself is subject to his birth.
He may not, as unvalued persons do,
Carve for himself, for on his choice depends
The sanity and health of the whole state.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

William Shakespeare