To tell the secrets of my prison house,

I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,

Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,

Thy knotted and combined locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand an-end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine ;
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood.

GHOST.

Act 1, Sc. 5, l. 13.

But virtue, as it never will be mov'd,
Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,
So lust, though to a radiant angel link'd,

Will sate itself in a celestial bed,

And prey on garbage.

Act 1, Sc. 5, l. 53.

GHOST.

Leave her to heaven,

And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge

To prick and sting her.

GHOST.

Act 1, Sc. 5, l. 86.

The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,
And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire.

HAMLET.

Act 1, Sc. 5, l. 90.

Remember thee!

Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory 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.
Unmix'd with baser matter: yes, by Heaven!
O most pernicious woman!

meet it is, I set it down,

O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
My tables,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;

At least, I am sure, it may

HAMLET.

There are more things in heaven and earth,

Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in our philosophy.

POLONIUS.

Act 1, Sc. 5, l. 166.

Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth:
And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,
With windlaces and with assays of bias,
By indirections find directions out.

POLONIUS.

Act 2, Sc. 1, l. 62.

This is the very ecstasy of love.

Act 2, Sc. 1, l. 102.

POLONIUS.

By heaven, it is as proper at our age
To cast beyond ourselves in our opinions,
As it is common for the younger sort
To lack discretion.

Act 2, Sc. 1, l. 115.

POLONIUS.

Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,

And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,

I will be brief.

POLONIUS.

Act 2, Sc. 2, 1. 90.

'Tis true 't is pity; and pity 't is 't is true.

GUILDENSTERN.

Act 2, Sc. 2, 1. 97.

Happy in that we are not over-happy;
On fortune's cap we are not the very button.

HAMLET.

Act 2, Sc. 2, 1. 220.

There is nothing either good or bad, but think

Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods,
In general synod, take away her power;

Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,
As low as to the fiends!
Act 2, Sc. 2, 1. 466.

HAMLET.

They are the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time after your death you were better have a bad epitaph, than their ill report while you live.

HAMLET.

Act 2, Sc. 2, 1. 495.

O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous, that this player here,

But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,

Could force his soul so to his own conceit,
That, from her working, all his visage wann'd:
Tears in his eyes, distraction in 's aspect,

A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
For Hecuba!

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,

That he should weep for her? What would he do Had he the motive and the cue for passion,

That I have?

tears,

He would drown the stage with

And cleave the general ear with horrid speech;
Make mad the guilty, and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant; and amaze, indeed,
The very faculties of eyes and ears.
Yet I,

A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property, and most dear life,
A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain, breaks my pate across,
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face,
Tweaks me by th' nose? gives me the lie i' th'
throat,

As deep as to the lungs? who does me this?
Ha!

'Swounds! I should take it; for it cannot be,
But I am pigeon-liver'd, and lack gall
To make oppression bitter, or, ere this,
I should have fatted all the region kites

With this slave's offal. Bloody, bawdy villain! Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!

O, vengeance!

Why, what an ass am I! Ay, sure, this is most brave;

That I, the son of a dear father murder'd, Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, Must like a whore, unpack my heart with words, And fall a-cursing like a very drab,

A scullion!

Fie upon
't! foh! About, my brain!
heard,

That guilty creatures, sitting at a play,
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul, that presently
They have proclaim'd their malefactions:

For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players

Play something like the murder of my father,
Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks;

I'll tent him to the quick: if he but blench,
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil: and the devil hath power
T'assume a pleasing shape; yea, and, perhaps,
Out of my weakness, and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me.
More relative than this:

I'll have grounds

the play 's the thing,

Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

Act 2, Sc. 2, l. 556.