Quotations from Shakespeare's Hamlet

Famous Quotations from Hamlet

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You come most carefully upon your hour. (1.1.6)

For this relief much thanks; 'tis bitter cold
And I am sick at heart. (1.1.10)

Look, where it comes again! (1.1.41)

But in the gross and scope of my opinion,
This bodes some strange eruption to our state. (1.1.69)

In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets. (1.1.125)

And then it started like a guilty thing
Upon a fearful summons. (1.1.148)

Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
The extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine. (1.1.153)

It faded on the crowing of the cock.
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 can walk abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallowed and so gracious is the time. (1.1.157)

But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,
Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill. (1.1.167)

The memory be green. (1.2.2)

The head is not more native to the heart,
The hand more instrumental to the brain,
Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father. (1.2.47)

A little more than kin, and less than kind. (1.2.65)

Not so, my lord; I am too much i' the sun. (1.2.67)

Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off,
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark. (1.2.68)

All that live must die,
Passing through nature to eternity. (1.2.72)

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; these indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play:
But I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe. (1.2.77)

But to persever
In obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief;
It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,
A heart unfortified, a mind impatient. (1.2.93)

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! O God! O God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world.
Fie on't! O fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr: so loving to my mother,
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on; and yet, within a month,
Let me not think on't: Frailty, thy name is woman!
A little month; or ere those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears; why she, even she,--
O God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourned longer,--married with mine uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules. (1.2.129)

It is not, nor it cannot come to good;
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue! (1.2.158)

A truant disposition, good my lord. (1.1.169)

We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart. (1.2.175)

He was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again. (1.2.187)

In the dead vast and middle of the night. (1.2.198)

Arm�d at point exactly, cap-a-pe. (1.2.200)

A countenance more in sorrow than in anger. (1.2.231)

While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred. (1.2.240)

Give it an understanding, but no tongue. (1.2.249)

All is not well;
I doubt some foul play. (1.2.254)

Foul deeds will rise,
Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes. (1.2.256)

And keep you in the rear of your affection,
Out of the shot and danger of desire.
The chariest maid is prodigal enough
If she unmask her beauty to the moon. (1.3.35)

Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
Whiles, like a puffed and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede. (1.3.48)

Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar;
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel. (1.3.59)

Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man. (1.3.68)

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. (1.3.69)

You speak like a green girl,
Unsifted in such perilous circumstance. (1.3.101)

When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
Lends the tongue vows. (1.3.116)

Ham. The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.
Hor. It is a nipping and an eager air. (1.4.1)

But to my mind,--though I am native here,
And to the manner born,--it is a custom
More honoured in the breach than the observance. (1.4.14)

Angels and ministers of grace, defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn�d,
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
Thou comest in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee: I �ll call thee Hamlet,
King, father, royal Dane: O, answer me!
Let me not burst in ignorance, but tell
Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death,
Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre,
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn�d,
Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws
To cast thee up again. 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? (1.4.39)

I do not set my life at a pin's fee. (1.4.65)

Unhand me, gentlemen,
By heaven! I'll make a ghost of him that lets me. (1.4.85)

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. (1.4.90)

I am thy father�s spirit,
Doom�d for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confin�d to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purg�d away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part
And each particular hair to stand an end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list! (1.5.14)

Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder. (1.5.25)

Murder most foul, as in the best it is;
But this most foul, strange, and unnatural. (1.5.27)

And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed
That rots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,
Wouldst thou not stir in this. (1.5.32)

O my prophetic soul!
My uncle! (1.5.40)

Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand,
Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatched;
Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled,
No reckoning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head:
O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible!
If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not. (1.5.74)

The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,
And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire. (1.5.89)

Remember thee!
Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee!
Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there. (1.5.96)

O most pernicious woman!
O villain, villain, smiling, damn'd villain!
My tables, - meet it is I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;
At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark. (1.5.105)

Hamlet. There�s never a villain dwelling in all Denmark
But he �s an arrant knave.
Horatio. There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave
To tell us this. (1.5.123)

Every man has business and desire,
Such as it is. (1.5.130)

These are but wild and whirling words, my lord. (1.5.133)

O day and night, but this is wondrous strange! (1.5.164)

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. (1.5.166)

To put an antic disposition on. (1.5.172)

Rest, rest, perturbed spirit! (1.5.182)

The time is out of joint; O curs'd spite,
That ever I was born to set it right! (1.5.188)

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