Act III, Scene 1 Quotes — Hamlet

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?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, / And thus the native hue of resolution / Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, / And enterprises of great pith and moment, / With this regard their currents turn awry / And lose the name of action.

The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn / No traveller returns, puzzles the will, / And makes us rather bear those ills we have / Than fly to others that we know not of?

To die, to sleep. / To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub, / For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, / When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, / Must give us pause.

O ’tis too true! / How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience! / The harlot’s cheek, beautied with plastering art, / Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it / Than is my deed to my most painted word.

Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?

O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown! / The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword, / Th’expectancy and rose of the fair state, / The glass of fashion and the mould of form, / Th’observ’d of all observers, quite, quite down!

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, / The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, / The pangs of dispriz’d 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?

God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another.

’Tis too much prov’d, that with devotion’s visage / And pious action we do sugar o’er / The devil himself.