Hamlet Quotes

The lady protests too much, methinks.

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature; for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as ’twere the mirror up to nature;

Our wills and fates do so contrary run / That our devices still are overthrown. / Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.

Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak.

’Tis now the very witching time of night, / When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out / Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood, / And do such bitter business as the day / Would quake to look on.

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven; / It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,— / A brother’s murder!

Now might I do it pat, now he is praying. / And now I’ll do’t. And so he goes to heaven; / And so am I reveng’d. That would be scann’d: / A villain kills my father, and for that / I, his sole son, do this same villain send / To heaven. O, this is hire and salary, not revenge.

I must be cruel, only to be kind: / Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.

O Hamlet, speak no more. / Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul, / And there I see such black and grained spots / As will not leave their tinct.