Quotes · verified word for word in the text
Hamlet quotes
23 quotes from Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Source: Project Gutenberg e-text #1524 (public domain in the USA), the text this site’s reader shows. Each quote is copied exactly from that text and links to its passage in the reader; when this page was built, every quote was checked word for word against the reader’s text.
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?
— Hamlet · Act III, Scene I — A room in the Castle
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
— Hamlet · Act I, Scene V — A more remote part of the Castle
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.
— Polonius · Act I, Scene III — A room in Polonius’s house
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
— Marcellus · Act I, Scene IV — The platform
The rest is silence.
— Hamlet · Act V, Scene II — A hall in the Castle
Neither a borrower nor a lender be: For loan oft loses both itself and friend; And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
— Polonius · Act I, Scene III — A room in Polonius’s house
Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.
— Hamlet · Act V, Scene I — A churchyard
The play’s the thing Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.
— Hamlet · Act II, Scene II — A room in the Castle
The time is out of joint. O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right.
— Hamlet · Act I, Scene V — A more remote part of the Castle
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief.
— Polonius · Act II, Scene II — A room in the Castle
Why, then ’tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.
— Hamlet · Act II, Scene II — A room in the Castle
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.
— Hamlet · Act III, Scene I — A room in the Castle
Get thee to a nunnery.
— Hamlet · Act III, Scene I — A room in the Castle
I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.
— Hamlet · Act II, Scene II — A room in the Castle
Rashly, And prais’d be rashness for it,—let us know, Our indiscretion sometime serves us well, When our deep plots do pall; and that should teach us There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will.
— Hamlet · Act V, Scene II — A hall in the Castle
Words, words, words.
— Hamlet · Act II, Scene II — A room in the Castle
Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.
— Polonius · Act II, Scene II — A room in the Castle
Why, she would hang on him As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on; and yet, within a month— Let me not think on’t—Frailty, thy name is woman!
— Hamlet · Act I, Scene II — Elsinore. A room of state in the Castle
O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.
— Hamlet · Act II, Scene II — A room in the Castle
Murder most foul, as in the best it is; But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.
— Ghost · Act I, Scene V — A more remote part of the Castle
O that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!
— Hamlet · Act I, Scene II — Elsinore. A room of state in the Castle
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
— King · Act III, Scene III — A room in the Castle
I must be cruel, only to be kind: Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.
— Hamlet · Act III, Scene IV — Another room in the Castle