Hamlet Famous Quotes

To be, or not to be, that is the question.

Hamlet's speech in Act 3, Scene 1, weighing whether to endure the pain of living or end it — the most famous expression of life-or-death indecision in the English language.

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty!

Hamlet tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern this in Act 2, Scene 2, lacing apparent wonder at human greatness with the contempt of a man who finds the world 'weary, stale, flat and unprofitable.'

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

Hamlet to Horatio in Act 1, Scene 5 after encountering the Ghost — the rational framework Horatio brought from Wittenberg cannot account for what they have just witnessed.

The lady protests too much, methinks.

Gertrude's dry aside during the play-within-a-play, unwittingly commenting on herself as she watches an actress play a queen who swears she will never remarry.

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's parting advice to Laertes in Act 1, Scene 3, delivered with such conviction that audiences have been quoting it as wisdom for four centuries — though Polonius applies none of it to his own conduct.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Marcellus to Horatio in Act 1, Scene 4, after Hamlet follows the Ghost into the dark — a soldier's blunt read of the situation, spoken before anyone knows what the Ghost has said.

The rest is silence.

Hamlet's last words as the poison takes hold in Act 5, Scene 2 — four words that close one of the most verbal plays ever written.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be; for loan oft loses both itself and friend.

Polonius's farewell advice to Laertes in Act 1, Scene 3 — well-meaning and entirely insufficient for the violence Laertes is about to walk into.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

Polonius delivers this in Act 2, Scene 2 immediately before giving one of the longest speeches in the scene — the gap between the instruction and the behaviour is the joke.

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio.

Hamlet holds the skull of the court jester he knew as a child in Act 5, Scene 1, speaking to Horatio in the graveyard — the play's plainest reckoning with death.

Get thee to a nunnery.

Hamlet's command to Ophelia in Act 3, Scene 1 — whether spoken to protect her from a corrupt world or to destroy her has never been resolved, and the ambiguity is the point.

Frailty, thy name is woman!

Hamlet's first speech to himself in Act 1, Scene 2, channelling grief at his father's death into rage at his mother's remarriage — before he knows anything about the murder.

Doubt thou the stars are fire; doubt that the sun doth move; doubt truth to be a liar; but never doubt I love.

Hamlet's love letter to Ophelia, read aloud by Polonius to the court in Act 2, Scene 2 as evidence of lovesick madness — the intimacy of the words is made grotesque by its public performance.

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause.

Part of the 'To be or not to be' speech in Act 3, Scene 1 — Hamlet arguing that fear of unknown dreams after death is what keeps people from ending their suffering.

Sweets to the sweet: farewell!

Gertrude scattering flowers at Ophelia's grave in Act 5, Scene 1 — possibly the most unguarded moment of feeling she shows in the entire play.