Corruption and Decay Quotes in Hamlet

’Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes / Between the pass and fell incensed points / Of mighty opposites.

Does it not, thinks’t thee, stand me now upon,— / He that hath kill’d my king, and whor’d my mother, / Popp’d in between th’election and my hopes, / Thrown out his angle for my proper life, / And with such cozenage—is’t not perfect conscience / To quit him with this arm?

A little month, or ere those shoes were old / With which she followed my poor father’s body / Like Niobe, all tears.—

O God! A beast that wants discourse of reason / Would have mourn’d longer,—married with mine uncle, / My father’s brother; but no more like my father / Than I to Hercules.

The canker galls the infants of the spring / Too oft before their buttons be disclos’d, / And in the morn and liquid dew of youth / Contagious blastments are most imminent.

His greatness weigh’d, his will is not his own; / For he himself is subject to his birth: / He may not, as unvalu’d persons do, / Carve for himself; for on his choice depends / The sanctity and health of this whole state;

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;

O Hamlet, what a falling off was there, / From me, whose love was of that dignity / That it went hand in hand even with the vow / I made to her in marriage; and to decline / Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor / To those of mine.

Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole / With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial, / And in the porches of my ears did pour / The leperous distilment,

and there put on him / What forgeries you please; marry, none so rank / As may dishonour him; take heed of that; / But, sir, such wanton, wild, and usual slips / As are companions noted and most known / To youth and liberty.