Polonius. Fear it Ophelia, fear it my dear sister,
And keep you in the rear of your affection,
Out of the shot and danger of desire.
The chariest maid is prodigal enough
If she unmask her beauty to the moon.
Virtue itself 'scapes not calumnious strokes.
The canker galls the infants of the spring
Too oft before their buttons be disclosed,
And in the morn and liquid dew of youth
Contagious blastments are most imminent.
Be warey then -- best safety lies in fear,
Youth to itself rebels, though none else near.
[I.iii.33-44]
Hamlet. Not a whit, we defy augury. There is special
providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis
not to come--if it be not to come, it will be now--if it be
not now, yet it will come--readiness is all. Since no
man, of aught he leaves, knows what is't to leave
betimes, let be.
[V.ii217-222]
Ophelia. There’s rosemary, that’s for
remembrance—pray you, love, remember— and there is
pansies, that’s for thoughts
There’s fennel for you, and
columbines. There’s rue for you, and
here’s some for me, we may call it herb of grace
o’Sundays—O, you must wear your rue with a differ-
ence. There’s a daisy. I would give you some violets,
but they withered all, when my father died—they say a’
made a good end—
[IV.v.1174-185]
Horatio warns Hamlet to speak with the ghost:
What if it tempt you toward the flood,
my lord,
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff
That beetles o’er his base into the sea,
And there assume some other horrible form,
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason,
And draw you into madness? think of it—
The very place puts toys of desperation,
Without more motive, into every brain
That looks so many fathoms to the sea
And hears it roar beneath.
[I.iiiv.68-78]
Hamlet.
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 die, to sleep—
No more, and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to; ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished to die to sleep!
To sleep, perchance to dream, ay there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
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 bare the whips and scorns of time,
Th’oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of dispraised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of h’unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin; who would carrels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bare those ills we have,
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 enterprise of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action… Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia—Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered.
[III.i.56-89]
Hamlet.
What a piece of work is a 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; and yet to me, what is this
quintessence of dust? Man delights not me, no, nor
woman neither.
[II.ii.308-313]
Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I
[II.ii.116-119]
Hamlet:
Seems, madam ! nay it is, I know not ‘seems.’
’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected haviour of the visage,
Together with all forms, modes, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly. These indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play,
But I have that within which passes show,
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.
[I.ii.76-86]
