Hamlet

by William Shakespeare

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

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?—To

To sleep! perchance to dream:—ay, there’s the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, 75 When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there’s the respect That makes calamity of so long life;

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, 80 The pangs of despis’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?

But that the dread of something after death,— The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn No traveller returns,—puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have 90 Than fly to others that we know not of?

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, 95 With this regard, their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.—Soft

in thy orisons Be all my sins...

Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.

That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.

Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with 120 honesty?

for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness: this was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof.

Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them 135 in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in.

What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven?

Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool nowhere but in’s own house.

If thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for thy dowry,— be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou 145 shalt not escape calumny.

Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go; and quickly too.

I say, we will 155 have no more marriages: those that are married already, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep as they are.

O, woe is me, To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!