Hamlet Act 1 Quotes

"Our sometime sister, now our Queen"

"A little more than kin, and less than kind."

"Seems, madam! Nay, it is; I know not "seems"

"O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew."

"How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world."

"Frailty, thy name is woman!"

"But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue."

"Thrift, thrift, Horatio! The funeral bak'd meats Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables."

"A countenance more in sorrow than in anger."

"I'll speak to it though Hell itself should gape And bid me hold my peace"

"For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favours, Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood; A violet in the youth of primy nature, Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting, The perfume and suppliance of a minute — No more."

"Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven, Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine, Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads. And recks not his own rede."

"Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar"

"Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice; Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment."

"Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy; For the apparel oft proclaims the man."

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be: For loan oft loses both itself and friend."

"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"

"But to my mind, — though I am native here And to the manner born, — it is a custom More honour'd in the breach than the observance."

"Why, what should be the fear? I do not set my life at a pin's fee, And for my soul, what can it do to that, Being a thing immortal as itself?"

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark"

"My hour is almost come When I to sulphrous and tormenting flames Must render up myself."

"The serpent that did sting thy father's life Now wears his crown."

"Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin."

"O horrible, O horrible, most horrible"

"And each particular hair to stand on end, Like quills upon the fretful porpentine"

"O most pernicious woman! O, villain, villain, smiling, damned villain! My tables, — meet it is I set it down, That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain"

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

"How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself — As I perchance hereafter shall think meet To put an antic disposition on"

"The time is out of joint; O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right!"