Polonius Quotes - Page 2

• One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.

  William Shakespeare

  Smile, War, Hamlet And Ophelia

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 1, sc. 5, l. 105

  198 Copy quote

  Show source

• When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.

  William Shakespeare

  Sympathy, Sadness, Sad Life

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 4, sc. 5, l. [78]

  47 Copy quote

  Show source

• Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice; Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.

  William Shakespeare

  Men, Epic Poems, Voice

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 1, sc. 3, l. 58

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• The time is out of joint : O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!

  William Shakespeare

  Time, Hamlet And Ophelia, Joints

  1600-1 Hamlet. Hamlet, act1, sc.5, l.189-90.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven; Whilst, like a puff'd and reckless libertine, Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads And recks not his own read.

  William Shakespeare

  Heaven, Puff, Hamlet And Ophelia

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 1, sc. 3, l. 47

  91 Copy quote

  Show source

• You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will more willingly part withal: except my life, except my life, except my life.

  William Shakespeare

  Hamlet And Ophelia, Important Hamlet, Hamlet 2

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 2, sc. 2, l. [221]

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will.

  William Shakespeare

  Life, Denmark In Hamlet, Hamlet And Ophelia

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 5, sc. 2, l. 10

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her?

  William Shakespeare

  Acting, Hamlet And Ophelia, Hamlet Revenge

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 2, sc. 2, l. [584]

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

  William Shakespeare

  Memorable, Disease And Death, Political

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 1, sc. 4, l. 90

  30 Copy quote

  Show source

• Beware of entrance to a quarrel, but, being in, bear t that th' opposed may beware of thee.

  William Shakespeare

  May, Bears, Important Hamlet

  1600-1 Polonius to Laertes. Hamlet, act1, sc.3, l.65-7.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum.

  William Shakespeare

  Brother, Hamlet And Ophelia, Tempest

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 5, sc. 1, l. [291]

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• A man can smile and smile and be a villain.

  Aldous Huxley

  Smile, Men, Hamlet And Ophelia

  Aldous Huxley (1950). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Brave new world”

  33 Copy quote

  Show source

• My words fly up, my thoughts remain below

  Claudius

  Language And Power, Hamlet And Ophelia, Hamlet Revenge

  15 Copy quote

• This is the very ecstasy of love.

  William Shakespeare

  Love, Important Hamlet, Ecstasy

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 2, sc. 1, l. 101

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Wise, Long, Soul

  10 Copy quote

• More matter with less art.

  William Shakespeare

  Art, Hamlet And Ophelia, Matter

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 2, sc. 2, l. 95

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Hamlet is to Macbeth somewhat as the Ghost is to the Witches. Revenge, or ambition, in its inception may have a lofty, even a majestic countenance, but when it has "coupled hell" and become crime, it grows increasingly foul and sordid. We love and admire Hamlet so much at the beginning that we tend to forget that he is as hot-blooded as the earlier Macbeth when he kills Polonius and the King, cold-blooded as the later Macbeth or Iago when he sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to death.

  Harold Clarke Goddard

  Kings, Revenge, Ambition

  4 Copy quote

• Give thy thoughts no tongue, nor any unproportioned thought his act. Be thou familiar but by no means vulgar.

  William Shakespeare

  Mean, Giving, Tongue

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 1, sc. 3, l. 58

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• ROSENCRANTZ My lord, you must tell us where the body is, and go with us to the king. HAMLET The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body. The king is a thing - GUILDENSTERN A thing my lord? HAMLET Of nothing. Bring me to him. Hide fox, and all after!

  William Shakespeare

  Kings, Body, Foxes

  William Shakespeare (2015). “The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark”, p.107, Hackett Publishing

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The neurotic thinks himself both Hamlet and Claudius, in a world that belongs to Polonius.

  Mignon McLaughlin

  Thinking, World, Neurotic

  "The Complete Neurotic's Notebook". Book by Mignon McLaughlin, 1981.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Lear, Macbeth. Mercutio – they live on their own as it were. The newspapers are full of them, if we were only the Shakespeares to see it. Have you ever been in a Police Court? Have you ever watched tradesmen behind their counters? My soul, the secrets walking in the streets! You jostle them at every corner. There's a Polonius in every first-class railway carriage, and as many Juliets as there are boarding-schools. ... How inexhaustibly rich everything is, if you only stick to life.

  Walter de La Mare

  School, Class, Soul

  Walter De la Mare (1933). “The Walter De La Mare Omnibus: Henry Brocken ; The Return ; Memoirs of a Midget”

  13 Copy quote

  Show source