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.

Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

The Ghost of Hamlet's dead father commands him to avenge his murder. It is the demand that sets the whole play going. Everything Hamlet does after this flows from these words.

We know what we are, but know not what we may be.

Ophelia, driven mad by her father's death and Hamlet's cruelty, speaks in scraps of song and riddle. This line reads as sense inside the madness: we know who we are now, but not what we will become. Treating her madness as a kind of clarity is a common reading rather than a stated fact.

There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember.

Handing out flowers in her madness, Ophelia gives each one a meaning. Rosemary stands for remembrance, and the scene is unbearably sad because she is asking to be remembered just before she drowns.

O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven.

Alone, Claudius tries to pray and admits his guilt for the first time. He killed his own brother, and he knows it stinks to heaven. Hamlet, watching, could kill him here but holds back.

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: words without thoughts never to heaven go.

The end of Claudius's failed attempt to pray. He cannot truly repent while he still holds the crown and queen he murdered for, so his prayers stay empty. He hears his own hollowness in this closing couplet.

Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

Horatio's farewell as Hamlet dies in his arms. Having begged to die alongside his friend, he agrees instead to live and tell the story. It is the play's most tender moment, spoken by its one loyal survivor.

The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

Hamlet's plan at the end of a long soliloquy. He will stage a play that mirrors the murder and watch Claudius for a reaction, using theatre to trap a killer. He wants proof before he acts.

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew!

Hamlet's first soliloquy, weeks after his father's death and his mother's hasty remarriage. He wishes his own body would simply dissolve. The grief and disgust arrive before he even knows his father was murdered.

I must be cruel, only to be kind.

Hamlet says this to his mother after killing Polonius by mistake, defending his harsh words to her as a form of care. Whether cruelty can really be kindness is a question the play leaves open.

There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.

Back from his sea voyage and calmer, Hamlet tells Horatio that some larger power steers human lives whatever we plan. It is a turn toward acceptance, and it comes just before the duel that kills him.

A little more than kin, and less than kind.

Hamlet's first line in the play, muttered aside about Claudius, who is now both his uncle and his stepfather. The pun on 'kin' and 'kind' is bitter: they are too closely related, and Hamlet feels no warmth at all.

Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.

Polonius, questioning Hamlet and getting strange answers, notices that the madness seems oddly organised. He is half right. Hamlet is partly performing, and the line has become shorthand for sense hidden inside apparent nonsense.

O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!

Hamlet turns on himself after watching an actor weep real tears over a made-up story. He has a real murder to avenge and still does nothing, and here he despises himself for it.