Quotes to inspire and reflect

Brevity is the soul of wit.

Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth; And thus do we of wisdom and of reach, With windlasses and with assays of bias, By indirections find directions out.

Ungarter’d, and down-gyved to his ankle.

Rest, rest, perturbed spirit!

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

To put an antic disposition on.

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

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; At least I’m sure it may be so in Denmark.

There’s ne’er a villain dwelling in all Denmark, But he’s an arrant knave.

Within the book and volume of my brain.

While memory holds a seat In this distracted globe. Remember thee! Yea, from the table of my memory I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records.

The glowworm shows the matin to be near, And ’gins to pale his uneffectual fire.

Leave her to heaven, And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge, To prick and sting her.

Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, Unhousel’d, disappointed, unanel’d, No reckoning made, but sent to my account With all my imperfections on my head.

In the porches of mine ears.

But virtue, as it never will be mov’d, Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven, So lust, though to a radiant angel link’d, Will sate itself in a celestial bed, And prey on garbage.

O Hamlet! what a falling-off was there.

O my prophetic soul! My uncle!

And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed That rots itself in ease on Lethe wharf.

Murder most foul, as in the best it is.

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 an end, Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Unhand me, gentlemen, By heaven! I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me.

The dreadful summit of the cliff That beetles o’er his base into the sea.

My fate cries out, And makes each petty artery in this body As hardy as the Nemean lion’s nerve.

What may this mean, That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel Revisit’st thus the glimpses of the moon, Making night hideous; 32 and we fools of nature So horridly to shake our disposition With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?

I do not set my life at a pin’s fee.

Angels and ministers of grace defend us!

Be thy intents wicked or charitable, Thou com’st in such a questionable shape That I will speak to thee.

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

The air bites shrewdly.

Be somewhat scanter of your maiden presence.

When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul Lends the tongue vows.

You speak like a green girl, Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.

Springes to catch woodcocks.

Neither a borrower, nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. 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.

’Tis in my memory lock’d, And you yourself shall keep the key of it.

Beware Of entrance to a quarrel, but, being in, Bear ’t that th’ opposed may beware of thee. 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.

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar; Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.

Give thy thoughts no tongue.

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. 31

Foul deeds will rise, Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes.

The chariest maid is prodigal enough If she unmask her beauty to the moon; Virtue itself ’scapes not calumnious strokes; The canker galls the infants of the spring Too oft before their buttons be disclos’d, And in the morn and liquid dew of youth Contagious blastments are most imminent.

All is not well; I doubt some foul play.

Give it an understanding, but no tongue.

A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.

Hamlet: His beard was grizzled, no? Horatio: It was, as I have seen it in his life, A sable silver’d.

Armed at points exactly, cap-a-pe.