Quotes from Shakespeare's Play "Hamlet"
Quotes from Shakespeare's Play "Hamlet"
🧠 Madness
1. "Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t."
– Polonius, Act 2, Scene 2
2. "I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw."
– Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2
3. "O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!"
– Ophelia, Act 3, Scene 1
4. "Madness in great ones must not unwatched go."
– Claudius, Act 3, Scene 1
5. "He that hath killed my king and whored my mother..."
– Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4
6. "You jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nickname God’s creatures."
– Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1
7. "Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me!"
– Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2
🩸 Betrayal & Corruption
8. "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."
– Marcellus, Act 1, Scene 4
9. "O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven."
– Claudius, Act 3, Scene 3
10. "Words without thoughts never to heaven go."
– Claudius, Act 3, Scene 3
11. "Let Hercules himself do what he may, the cat will mew and dog will have his day."
– Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 1
12. "So full of artless jealousy is guilt, it spills itself in fearing to be spilt."
– Gertrude, Act 4, Scene 5
13. "Give me some light. Away!"
– Claudius, Act 3, Scene 2
14. "A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king..."
– Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 3
💀 Mortality & Death
15. "To be, or not to be: that is the question."
– Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1
16. "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio."
– Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 1
17. "Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."
– Horatio, Act 5, Scene 2
18. "The rest is silence."
– Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2
19. "To die, to sleep—no more—and by a sleep to say we end the heartache..."
– Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1
20. "O that this too too solid flesh would melt..."
– Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2
21. "Now might I do it pat, now he is praying."
– Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 3
22. "There's rosemary, that's for remembrance."
– Ophelia, Act 4, Scene 5
⚔️ Revenge & Justice
23. "The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king."
– Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2
24. "O, from this time forth, my thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!"
– Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 4
25. "Give me that man that is not passion’s slave."
– Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2
26. "Conscience does make cowards of us all."
– Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1
27. "O horrible, O horrible, most horrible!"
– Ghost, Act 1, Scene 5
🎭 Appearance vs Reality
28. "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
– Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2
29. "Seems, madam! Nay, it is. I know not 'seems'."
– Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2
30. "One may smile, and smile, and be a villain."
– Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5
31. "Use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping?"
– Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2
32. "A little more than kin, and less than kind."
– Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2
33. "What a piece of work is man!"
– Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2
💔 Love & Relationships
34. "Get thee to a nunnery!"
– Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1
35. "I did love you once."
– Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1
36. "I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers could not with all their quantity of love make up my sum."
– Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 1
37. "Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move..."
– Hamlet (letter), Act 2, Scene 2
38. "Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul."
– Gertrude, Act 3, Scene 4
39. "You cannot call it love; for at your age the heyday in the blood is tame."
– Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4
40. "O, speak to me no more; these words like daggers enter in mine ears."
– Gertrude, Act 3, Scene 4
🧘 Wisdom & Philosophy
41. "This above all: to thine own self be true."
– Polonius, Act 1, Scene 3
42. "Neither a borrower nor a lender be."
– Polonius, Act 1, Scene 3
43. "Brevity is the soul of wit."
– Polonius, Act 2, Scene 2
44. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
– Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5
45. "When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions."
– Claudius, Act 4, Scene 5
46. "It is a custom more honoured in the breach than the observance."
– Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 4
47. "Let me be cruel, not unnatural: I will speak daggers to her, but use none."
– Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2
48. "I must be cruel only to be kind."
– Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4
49. "My words fly up, my thoughts remain below."
– Claudius, Act 3, Scene 3
50. "Do not as some ungracious pastors do..."
– Ophelia, Act 1, Scene 3
51. "Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet."
– Gertrude, Act 1, Scene 2
52. "There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will."
– Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2