- Hamlet: 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 take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them.
- Hamlet: Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio - a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath bore me on his back a thousand times, and now how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung these lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar?
- Hamlet: I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire! Why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! In form and moving, how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
- Hamlet: Now mother, what's the matter?
- Gertrude: Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
- Hamlet: Mother, you have *my* father much offended.
- Gertrude: Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
- Hamlet: Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue!
- Gertrude: Why, how now, Hamlet?
- Hamlet: What's the matter now?
- Gertrude: Have you forgot me?
- Hamlet: No by the rood, not so! You are the queen, your husband's brother's wife!
- Polonius: 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.
- Horatio: Two nights together had these gentlemen, Marcellus and Barnardo, on their watch in the dead waste and middle of the night, been thus encountered. A figure like your father, armed at all points exactly, cap-a-pie, appears before them, and with solemn march goes slowly and stately by them. Thrice he walked by their oppressed and fear-surprised eyes within his truncheon's length, whilst they distilled almost to jelly with the act of fear, stand dumb and speak not to him. This to me in dreadful secrecy impart they did and I with them the third night kept the watch where, as they had delivered, both in time, form of the thing, each word made true and good the apparition comes. I knew your father. These hands are not more like.
- Hamlet: But where was this?
- Marcellus: My lord, upon the platform where we watched.
- Hamlet: Did you not speak to it?
- Horatio: Oh, my lord, I did, but answer made it none. Yet once methought it lifted up its head and did address itself to motion like as it would speak, but even then the morning cock crew loud, and at the sound it shrunk in haste away and vanished from our sight.
- Hamlet: 'Tis very strange.
- Horatio: As I do live, my honored lord, 'tis true, and we did think it writ down in our duty to let you know of it.
- Hamlet: Indeed, indeed, sirs. But this troubles me. Hold you the watch tonight?
- Barnardo: My lord, we do.
- Hamlet: Armed, say you?
- Horatio, Marcellus, Barnardo: Armed, my lord.
- Hamlet: What, from top to toe?
- Marcellus: My lord, from head to foot.
- Hamlet: Then saw you not his face.
- Horatio: O, yes, my lord. He wore his beaver up.
- Hamlet: What looked he? Frowningly?
- Horatio: A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.
- Hamlet: Pale or red?
- Horatio: Nay, very pale.
- Hamlet: And fixed his eyes upon you?
- Horatio: Most constantly.
- Hamlet: I would I had been there.
- Horatio: It would have much amazed you.
- Hamlet: I lov'd Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers could not with all their quantity of love make up my sum.
- Horatio: Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
- Fortinbras: [seeing the throne room littered with dead bodies] This quarry cries on havoc. / O proud Death, what feast is toward in thine eternal cell / That thou so many princes at a shot / So bloodily hast struck?
- Hamlet: 'Tis now the very witching time of night, when church yards yawn and hell itself breathes out contagion to this world.
- Hamlet: If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.
- Hamlet: Whose grave is this sir?
- First Gravedigger: Mine sir.
- [Resumes singing his ditty]
- Hamlet: [Interrupts] I think it be thine indeed, for thou liest in't.
- First Gravedigger: You lie out on't sir, and therefore it is not yours. For my part I do not lie ins't and yet it is mine.
- Hamlet: Thou dost lie in't to be in't, and say 'tis thine. 'Tis for the dead not for the quick, therefore thou liest.
- First Gravedigger: 'Tis a quick lie, sir. 'Twill away again from me to you.
- Hamlet: What man dost thou dig it for?
- First Gravedigger: For no man sir.
- Hamlet: For what woman then?
- First Gravedigger: For none neither.
- Hamlet: *Who* is to be buried here?
- First Gravedigger: One that was a woman sir, but rest her soul, she's dead.
- Hamlet: Wither with thou lead me? Speak. I'll go no further.
- Ghost: Mark me.
- Hamlet: I will.
- Ghost: My hour is almost come when I to sulph'rous and tormenting flames must render up myself.
- Hamlet: Alas, poor ghost.
- Ghost: Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing to what I shall unfold.
- Hamlet: Speak. I am bound to hear.
- Hamlet: So gentlemen, with all my love I do commend me to you, and what so poor a man as Hamlet is may do to express his love and friending to you, God willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together, and still your fingers on your lips, I pray. The time is out of joint. O cursed spite that ever I was born to set it right.
- Hamlet: If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, absent thee from felicity awhile and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain to tell my story.
- Hamlet: I myself am indifferent honest, yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me.