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Hamlet

Book by William Shakespeare · 8 quotes · Hamlet, William Shakespeare, Death

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Hamlet Quotes

“This business is well ended. My liege and madam, to expostulate What majesty should be, what duty is, Why day is day, night night, and time is time, Were nothing but to waste night, day and time. Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief. Your son is mad. Mad I call it. For, to define true madness, What is't but to be nothing else but mad? But let that go.”

“O all you host of heaven!O Earth! waht else? And shall i couple hell? O Fie! Hold, hold, my heart And you, my sinews, grow not instant old, But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee? Ay, thou poor ghost, while memmory holds a seat In this distracted globe. Remember thee? Yea, from the table of my memory I'll wipe away all trivial fond records, All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past That youth and observation copied there, And thy commandment all alone shall live Within the book and volume of my brain, Unmixed with baser matter; yes, by heaven!”

“She speaks much of her father: says she hears There's tricks i'th'world, and hems, and beats her heart, Spurns enviously at straws, speaks things in doubt That carry but half sense. Her speech is nothing. Yet the unshaped use of it doth move The hearers to collection. They aim at it, And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts, Which, as her winks and nods and gestures yield them, Indeed, would make one think there might be thought, Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.”

“When Rosencrantz asks Hamlet, "Good my lord, what is your cause of distemper? You do surely bar the door upon your own liberty, if you deny your grief to your friends"(III, ii, 844-846), Hamlet responds, "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 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. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me." (III,ii, 371-380)”

Book: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, moods, 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.”