| “Our sometime sister, now our Queen” | Claudius in beginning speech |
| “A little more than kin, and less than kind.” | Hamlet in aside while with Claudius |
| “Seems, madam! Nay, it is; I know not “seems” | Hamlet to Gertrude |
| “O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew.” | Hamlet in his soliloquy about suicide |
| “How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world.” | Hamlet in his soliloquy about suicide |
| “Frailty, thy name is woman!” | Hamlet in his soliloquy about suicide |
| “But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.” | Hamlet in his soliloquy about suicide |
| “Thrift, thrift, Horatio! The funeral bak’d meatsDid coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.” | Hamlet to horatio |
| “A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.” | Horatio to Hamlet |
| “I’ll speak to it though Hell itself should gapeAnd bid me hold my peace” | Hamlet to Horatio, bernardo and marcellus |
| “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.” | Laertes to Ophelia about Hamlet’s love |
| “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.” | Ophelia to Laertes |
| “Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar” | Polonius to Laertes |
| “Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.” | Polonius to Laertes |
| “Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;For the apparel oft proclaims the man.” | Polonius to Laertes |
| “Neither a borrower nor a lender be:For loan oft loses both itself and friend.” | Polonius to Laertes |
| “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” | Polonius to Laertes |
| “But to my mind, — though I am native hereAnd to the manner born, — it is a customMore honour’d in the breach than the observance.” | Hamlet to Horatio before ghost |
| “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?” | Hamlet to Horatio when ghost appears |
| “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” | Marcellus to Horatio |
| “My hour is almost comeWhen I to sulphrous and tormenting flamesMust render up myself.” | ghost to Hamlet |
| “The serpent that did sting thy father’s lifeNow wears his crown.” | ghost to Hamlet |
| “Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin.” | ghost to Hamlet |
| “O horrible, O horrible, most horrible” | ghost to Hamlet |
| “And each particular hair to stand on end,Like quills upon the fretful porpentine” | ghost to Hamlet |
| “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” | hamlet to himself after ghost leaves |
| “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” | Hamlet to Horatio |
| “How strange or odd soe’er I bear myself —As I perchance hereafter shall think meetTo put an antic disposition on” | Hamlet to Marcellus and Horatio |
| “The time is out of joint; O cursed spite,That ever I was born to set it right!” | Hamlet to Marcellus and Horatio |
Hamlet Act 1 quotes
July 25, 2019