Hamlet Quotes
More Hamlet Quotes
Shakespeare ’s plays feature many soliloquies, some of which are his most famous passages. Perhaps the most famous is Hamlet ’s ‘to be or not to be’ soliloquy, where Hamlet contemplates suicide . The audience is taken through his thought processes, where he balances the pros and cons of ending his life – an all time classic soliloquy.
— No Sweat Shakespeare, in "Definition of Monologues & Soliloquies In Shakespeare".
"Out of the mouth of the Mother of God , More than the doors of doom, I call the muster of Wessex men From grassy Hamlet or ditch or den, To break and be broken, God knows when, But I have seen for whom.
— G. K. Chesterton, in The Ballad of the White Horse (1911), Book II : The Gathering Of The Chiefs
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince.
— 1915 'The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock' (first published in Poetry magazine, collected in Prufrock and Other Observations, 1917).
I saw Hamlet Prince of Denmark played, but now the old plays begin to disgust this refined age.
john evelyn— 1661 Diary entry, 26 Nov.
Do you know how they are going to decide the Shakespeare^Bacon dispute? Theyare going to dig up Shakespeareand dig up Bacon; theyaregoing toget Tree to recite Hamlet to them. And the one who turns in his coffin will be the author of the play.
Sir W(illiam) S(chwenck) Gilbert— Letter.
Could Hamlet have been written by a committee, or the Mona Lisa painted by a club? Could the New Testament have been composed as a conference report?
Alfred Whitney Griswold— Baccalaureate address, 9 June 1957.
I would rather play Hamlet with no rehearsal than TV golf.
Jack (John Uhler) Lemmon— Quoted in Michael Hobbs The Golf Quotation Book (1992).
To say that these men paid their shillings to watch twenty-two hirelings kick a ball is merely to say that a violin is wood and catgut, that Hamlet is so much paper and ink. For a shilling the Bruddersford United AFC offered you Conflict and Art.
— 1929 The Good Companions, bk.1, ch.1.
Hamlet, Kiekegaard, Kafka are ironists in the wake of Jesus. All Western irony is a repetition of Jesus' enigmas/riddles, in amalgam with the ironies of Socrates.
Harold Bloom— Jesus and Yahweh: the names divine (2005), p 10
King Lear is undoubtedly the greatest play ever written by Shakespeare — or anybody else for that matter. Hamlet is certainly great, but it doesn't contain as many elements of humanity as we see in Lear.
paul scofield— Quoted in Royah Nikkhah, "Scofield's Lear voted the greatest Shakespeare performance", Telegraph.co.uk (2004-08-22)
Leonardo is the Hamlet of art history whom each of us must recreate for himself.
kenneth clark— Ch. Nine: 1513-1519
Hamlet 's character is the prevalence of the abstracting and generalizing habit over the practical. He does not want courage, skill, will, or opportunity; but every incident sets him thinking; and it is curious, and at the same time strictly natural, that Hamlet, who all the play seems reason itself, should he impelled, at last, by mere accident to effect his object. I have a smack of Hamlet myself, if I may say so.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge— 24 June 1827.
When we look to presumed sources of origin for competing evolutionary explanations of the giraffe's long neck, we find either nothing at all, or only the shortest of speculative conjectures. Length, of course, need not correspond with importance. Garrulous old Polonius , in a rare moment of clarity, reminded us that "brevity is the soul of wit" (and then immediately vitiated his wise observation with a flood of woolly words about Hamlet 's Madness.)
stephen jay gould— "The Tallest Tale", p. 304
The playbill, which is said to have announced the tragedy of Hamlet, the character of the Prince of Denmark being left out.
walter scott— The Talisman, Introduction (1825).
It's very hard! Oh, Dick, my boy, It's very hard one can't enjoy A little private spouting; But sure as Lear or Hamlet lives, Up comes our master, Bounce! and gives The tragic Muse a routing.
thomas hood— Thomas Hood, The Stage-Struck Hero.
Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel? Polonius: By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed.
william shakespeare— William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 2.
Hamlet: The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold. Horatio: It is a nipping and an eager air.
william shakespeare— William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act i, scene 4.
This is I, Hamlet the Dane!
— Hamlet, scene i
Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage.
— Fortinbras, scene ii
This isn't Hamlet , you know. It's not meant to go into the bloody ear.
— Who: Actor Laurence Olivier supposedly said this when a nurse, attempting to moisten his lips, mis-aimed.
— Note: In Shakespeare's play Hamlet, the title character's father is killed when poison is dripped into his ear while asleep.
Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, The rude forefathers of the Hamlet sleep. The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn, The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed, The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.
thomas gray— 1751Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, l.13-20.
Each in his narrow cell forever laid, The rude Forefathers of the Hamlet sleep.
thomas gray— St. 4. (Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1750))
This being great news to me, I pressed Kivoi for further information. He said, 'You will see both mountains at some distance from my Hamlet, when there shall be a clear sky. It is ten days' journey from here to the white mountain in Jagga [Kilimanjaro], but only six to that of Kikuyu [Mount Kenya].' ~ Johann Ludwig Krapf
— Written by Krapf in his diary on 1949-11-26, the day he found out of the existence of a second, and still larger, Kiima ja Jeu [mountain of whiteness] [than Kilimanjaro].
Twilight's soft dews steal o'er the village-green, With magic tints to harmonize the scene Stilled is the hum that through the Hamlet broke When round the nuns of their ancient oak The peasants flocked to hear the minstrel play, And games and carols closed the busy day.
samuel rogers— Samuel Rogers, Pleasures of Memory, Pt I, line 1.
