William Shakespeare - Hamlet

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Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar;
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.

William Shakespeare
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 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 wished. To die to sleep, To sleep, perchance to Dream; Aye, there's the rub.

William Shakespeare
How should I your true love know
From another one?
By his cockle hat and staff,
And his sandal shoon.

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

William Shakespeare
O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

William Shakespeare
I have heard,
That guilty creatures sitting at a play
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaimed their malefactions;
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ.

William Shakespeare
'Tis in my memory lock'd,
And you yourself shall keep the key of it.

William Shakespeare
Seems, madam! Nay, it is; I know not 'seems'.
'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected 'haviour of the visage,
Together with all forms, modes, shows of grief,
That can denote me truly.

William Shakespeare
A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.

William Shakespeare
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh.

William Shakespeare
Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny.

William Shakespeare
Cudgel thy brains no more about it, for your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating.

William Shakespeare
What should such fellows as I do crawling between heaven and earth? We are arrant knaves, all.

William Shakespeare
Not a whit, we defy augury; 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.

William Shakespeare
Let Hercules himself do what he may,
The cat will mew and dog will have his day.

William Shakespeare
O God! Horatio, what a wounded name,
Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me. If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
To tell my story.

William Shakespeare
Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death
The memory be green.

William Shakespeare
To the noble mind
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.

William Shakespeare
There is no ancient gentlemen but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers; they hold up Adam's profession.

William Shakespeare
It is not, nor it cannot come to good;
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue!

William Shakespeare
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of disprized 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?…
Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all.

William Shakespeare
The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited.

William Shakespeare
I will speak daggers to her, but use none.

William Shakespeare
This most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.

William Shakespeare
Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty.

William Shakespeare
Hamlet: His beard was grizzled, no?
Horatio: It was, as I have seen it in his life,
A sable silver'd.

William Shakespeare
Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade To shepherds, looking on their silly sheep, Than doth a rich embroider'd canopy To kings that fear their subjects treachery?

William Shakespeare
The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!

William Shakespeare
Nature her custom holds,
Let shame say what it will.

William Shakespeare
Queen: Thou know'st 'tis common; all that live must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.
Hamlet: Ay, madam, it is common.

William Shakespeare