William Shakespeare, Hamlet

"Suit the action to the word, the Word to the action."

"Lord Polonius: What do you read, my lord? Hamlet: Words, words, words. Lord Polonius: What is the matter, my lord? Hamlet: Between who? Lord Polonius: I mean, the matter that you read, my lord."

"Refrain to-night;And that shall lend a kind of easiness To the next abstinence, the next more easy;For use almost can change the stamp of nature,And either master the devil or throw him out With wondrous potency."

"This is the very ecstasy of love,Whose violent property fordoes itself And leads the will to desperate undertakings As oft as any passion under heaven That does afflict our natures."

"My liege, and madam, to expostulate What majesty should be, what duty is, Why day is day, night night, and time is time,Were nothing but to waste night, day and time. Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,I will be brief."

"Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?"

"The Devil hath power To assume a pleasing shape."

"- Where is Polonius?- In heaven; send hither to see: if your messenger find him not there, seek him i' the other place yourself."

"For some must watch, while some must sleep So runs the world away"

"There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

"Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade."

"Give me that man that is not passion's slave, and I will wear him in my heart's core, in my heart of heart, as I do thee."

"I could a tale unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres,Thy knotted and combined locks to part,And each particular hair to stand on end Like quills upon the fretful porpentine. But this eternal blazon must not be To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O list!"

"O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else?And shall I couple Hell?"

"There is more things in heaven and earth...than are dreamt of by your philosophy."

"There are more things in heaven and earth...than are dreamt of by your philosophy."

"Remember thee? Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seatin this distracted globe. Remember thee?"

"And will 'a not come again? And will 'a not come again? No, no, he is dead, Go to thy death bed: He will never come again."

"Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,And therefore I forbid my tears."

"O, that this too too solid flesh would melt Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,Seem to me all the uses of this world!Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. That it should come to this!But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two:So excellent a king; that was, to this,Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother That he might not beteem the winds of heaven Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!Must I remember? why, she would hang on him,As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on: and yet, within a month--Let me not think on't--Frailty, thy name is woman!--A little month, or ere those shoes were old With which she follow'd my poor father's body,Like Niobe, all tears:--why she, even she--O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,Would have mourn'd longer--married with my uncle,My father's brother, but no more like my father Than I to Hercules: within a month:Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,She married. O, most wicked speed, to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!It is not nor it cannot come to good:But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue."