Act I, Scene 4 Quotes — Hamlet

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Ay marry is’t; / And to my mind, though I am native here, / And to the manner born, it is a custom / More honour’d in the breach than the observance.

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 com’st in such a questionable shape / That I will speak to thee.

The dram of evil / Doth all the noble substance of a doubt / To his own scandal.

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?

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?

So oft it chances in particular men / That for some vicious mole of nature in them, / As in their birth, wherein they are not guilty, / Since nature cannot choose his origin, / By their o’ergrowth of some complexion, / Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason;