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.

What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving, how express and admirable; in action how like an angel, in apprehension, how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals.

Her clothes spread wide, / And mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up, / Which time she chaunted snatches of old tunes, / As one incapable of her own distress, / Or like a creature native and indued / Unto that element.

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 on end / Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.

My lord, as I was sewing in my chamber, / Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbrac'd, / No hat upon his head, his stockings foul'd, / Ungart'red, and down-gyved to his ankle, / Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other, / And with a look so piteous in purport / As if he had been loosed out of hell / To speak of horrors, he comes before me.

Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave, / That I, the son of a dear father murder’d, / Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, / Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words / And fall a-cursing like a very drab, / A scullion!

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.

Purpose is but the slave to memory, / Of violent birth, but poor validity: / Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree, / But fall unshaken when they mellow be.

Here is your husband, like a mildew’d ear / Blasting his wholesome brother.

These words like daggers enter in mine ears;