Hamlet Act 1 quotes

Our sometime sister, now our Queen

King Claudius

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

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world.

Hamlet

But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.

- Hamlet (to himself, about Gertrude and Claudius' marriage)
- It's hurting Hamlet that he knows this about Gertrude and Claudius but he cannot say anything about it to anyone.

Thrift, thrift, Horatio! The funeral bak'd meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.

Hamlet

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.

King Claudius

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

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

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

Polunius

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

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark

Marcellus

The serpent that did sting thy father's life
Now wears his crown.

Hamlet