Claudius Quotes in Hamlet

O most wicked speed, to post / With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! / It is not, nor it cannot come to good. / But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.

Not so, my lord, I am too much i' the sun.

Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen, / Th’imperial jointress to this warlike state, / Have we, as ’twere with a defeated joy, / With one auspicious and one dropping eye, / With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage, / In equal scale weighing delight and dole, / Taken to wife;

O villain, villain, smiling damned villain!

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.

None wed the second but who kill'd the first.

Marry, how? Tropically. This play is the image of a murder done in Vienna.

I prithee, when thou see’st that act a-foot, / Even with the very comment of thy soul / Observe mine uncle. If his occulted guilt / Do not itself unkennel in one speech, / It is a damned ghost that we have seen;

Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent: / When he is drunk asleep; or in his rage, / Or in th’incestuous pleasure of his bed, / At gaming, swearing; or about some act / That has no relish of salvation in’t, / Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven, / And that his soul may be as damn’d and black / As hell, whereto it goes.

May one be pardon’d and retain th’offence? / In the corrupted currents of this world / Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice, / And oft ’tis seen the wicked prize itself / Buys out the law.