Hamlet has given English more famous lines than any other play, and many of them are quoted in ways that would surprise their speakers: the wisdom comes from a fool, the praise of honesty from a spy, and the most famous question in literature from a man thinking about ending his life.
This guide collects the most famous lines in the play, act by act, with who says each one, where it comes in the story, and what it means. For the play as a whole, see our full guide to Hamlet.
At a Glance
Here are the essentials about the quotations of Hamlet for quick reference.
Act 1 Quotes
Grief, a hasty marriage, a father’s advice, and a ghost.
“A Little More Than Kin, and Less Than Kind”
Hamlet, Act 1, scene 2, his first line in the play, spoken aside about Claudius. Claudius is now doubly related to him, as uncle and stepfather, “more than kin,” but Hamlet feels no kindness toward him. The pun on “kind,” meaning both family and affectionate, shows his bitter wit from the start.
“O, That This Too, Too Sullied Flesh Would Melt”
Hamlet, Act 1, scene 2, opening his first soliloquy. Alone at last, he wishes his body would simply dissolve, and that God had not forbidden suicide. Some editions print “solid flesh” instead of “sullied”; the early texts differ, and both readings make sense.
“How Weary, Stale, Flat, and Unprofitable”
Hamlet, in the same soliloquy: “How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable / Seem to me all the uses of this world!” The world has become to him “an unweeded garden / That grows to seed.” It is one of literature’s most exact descriptions of depression.
“Frailty, Thy Name Is Woman!”
Hamlet, still in the same soliloquy, about his mother, who married Claudius “within a month” of his father’s death. He turns his anger at one woman into a judgment on all women, a habit that returns in his treatment of Ophelia.
“Neither a Borrower Nor a Lender Be”
Polonius, Act 1, scene 3, advising his son Laertes before he leaves for France: “Neither a borrower nor a lender be, / For loan oft loses both itself and friend.” Lend to a friend and you may lose both the money and the friendship. It is sensible advice, from a man the play treats as a meddling fool.
“This Above All: To Thine Own Self Be True”
Polonius, concluding the same speech: “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.” Now a popular motto, it has an irony in context: the speaker spends the rest of the play spying on others and being false to nearly everyone, and soon sends a servant to spy on the very son he is advising.
“Something Is Rotten in the State of Denmark”
Marcellus, a guard, Act 1, scene 4, as Hamlet follows the Ghost. The line is often credited to Hamlet, but it belongs to a minor character. It captures the sense that something is deeply wrong at the heart of the kingdom. Our guide to the themes of Hamlet looks at the play’s images of rot and corruption.
“One May Smile, and Smile, and Be a Villain”
Hamlet, Act 1, scene 5, just after the Ghost has told him the truth about Claudius. He resolves to write it down: a man can smile and smile and still be a villain, at least in Denmark. It introduces the play’s great theme of false appearances.
“There Are More Things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio”
Hamlet, Act 1, scene 5, to his skeptical friend after the Ghost’s appearance: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” The world holds more mysteries than learning can explain. The First Folio prints “our philosophy,” which makes the line a comment on human knowledge in general.
“The Time Is Out of Joint”
Hamlet, closing Act 1: “The time is out of joint. O cursed spite / That ever I was born to set it right!” The world is dislocated, like a joint out of its socket, and Hamlet resents being the one who must fix it. The couplet sums up his reluctance before the play’s action has even begun.
Act 2 Quotes
Pretended madness, false friends, and a company of actors.
“Brevity Is the Soul of Wit”
Polonius, Act 2, scene 2, announcing to the king and queen that he will be brief, in the middle of a long, rambling speech. The joke is that he is anything but brief. “Wit” here means intelligence as much as humor: good sense is best expressed in few words.
“Though This Be Madness, Yet There Is Method in ’t”
Polonius, aside, Act 2, scene 2, after Hamlet mocks him with apparently wild answers. Even Polonius can hear the sense beneath Hamlet’s act. It is the source of the everyday phrase “method in the madness.”
“There Is Nothing Either Good or Bad but Thinking Makes It So”
Hamlet, Act 2, scene 2, to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, after calling Denmark a prison. They disagree, and he replies that things are good or bad only as we think them. To him, “it is a prison,” and his mind makes it one.
“I Could Be Bounded in a Nutshell”
Hamlet, a moment later: “O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.” His troubles, he says, come not from where he is but from what is in his head.
“What a Piece of Work Is a Man”
Hamlet, Act 2, scene 2, still to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. He praises humanity, “how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties,” “the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals,” and then turns: “and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?” The swing from wonder to disgust captures his despair.
“O, What a Rogue and Peasant Slave Am I!”
Hamlet, alone, Act 2, scene 2, after watching an actor weep over the fall of Troy. If an actor can feel so much for a fiction, “What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, / That he should weep for her?”, why has Hamlet, with real cause, done nothing? The soliloquy is his most savage attack on himself.
“The Play’s the Thing Wherein I’ll Catch the Conscience of the King”
Hamlet, ending the same soliloquy. Worried that the Ghost may be a devil, he decides to test Claudius by having the actors perform a murder like his father’s, and to watch the king’s face.
Act 3 Quotes
The great soliloquy, the play within the play, and a failed prayer.
“To Be or Not to Be, That Is the Question”
Hamlet, Act 3, scene 1, the most famous line in English. He weighs whether it is nobler to endure life’s suffering or to end it. What stops people, he concludes, is fear of what comes after death, “The undiscovered country from whose bourn / No traveler returns.” Our guide to Shakespeare’s soliloquies looks at how the speech works.
“Thus Conscience Does Make Cowards of Us All”
Hamlet, in the same speech. Too much thinking, he says, kills action: “the native hue of resolution / Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.” “Conscience” here means reflection and awareness, not only a sense of right and wrong.
“Get Thee to a Nunnery”
Hamlet to Ophelia, Act 3, scene 1: “Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?” Suspecting she has been sent to trap him, he turns on her cruelly, telling her to shut herself away from men and marriage altogether.
“O, What a Noble Mind Is Here O’erthrown!”
Ophelia, alone after Hamlet leaves her, Act 3, scene 1. She mourns the man he used to be, “The glass of fashion and the mold of form,” and herself, “of ladies most deject and wretched.” It is her only soliloquy, and it is about him.
“To Hold, as ’Twere, the Mirror Up to Nature”
Hamlet, Act 3, scene 2, instructing the actors. The purpose of playing, he says, is to show the world its true face, virtue and vice alike. It is one of the most quoted statements about what drama is for.
“The Lady Doth Protest Too Much, Methinks”
Gertrude, Act 3, scene 2, watching the play within the play, in which the Player Queen swears she will never remarry. To “protest” here means to vow, not to object: the lady’s promises are so insistent that they are hard to believe. The irony is that Gertrude did remarry, and quickly.
“My Words Fly Up, My Thoughts Remain Below”
Claudius, Act 3, scene 3, rising from his attempt to pray: “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below; / Words without thoughts never to heaven go.” The prayer Hamlet was afraid to interrupt never reached heaven after all.
“I Must Be Cruel Only to Be Kind”
Hamlet, Act 3, scene 4, in his mother’s room, after killing Polonius and confronting Gertrude with her marriage. His harsh words, he insists, are meant for her good. The phrase “cruel to be kind” is still in everyday use.
Act 4 Quotes
Ophelia’s madness and a king under pressure.
“When Sorrows Come, They Come Not Single Spies”
Claudius, Act 4, scene 5, after watching the mad Ophelia: “When sorrows come, they come not single spies, / But in battalions.” Troubles never arrive alone. He lists them: Polonius killed, Hamlet sent away, Ophelia mad, and Laertes secretly returned.
“Good Night, Sweet Ladies”
Ophelia, in the same scene, leaving the court in her madness: “Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.” The courtly farewell, spoken by someone who no longer knows where she is, is one of the most painful moments in the play.
Act 5 Quotes
The graveyard, the duel, and the end.
“Alas, Poor Yorick! I Knew Him, Horatio”
Hamlet, Act 5, scene 1, holding the skull of the old king’s jester, who carried him on his back as a child: “a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.” The line is famously misquoted as “I knew him well.” The skull makes death real, and Hamlet imagines telling a fine lady that however thick she paints her face, “to this favor she must come.”
“There’s a Divinity That Shapes Our Ends”
Hamlet, Act 5, scene 2, to Horatio: “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, / Rough-hew them how we will.” People can roughly shape their plans, but a higher power finishes them. It marks Hamlet’s new acceptance of what he cannot control.
“The Readiness Is All”
Hamlet, before the duel, when Horatio offers to call it off: “There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all.” Death will come when it will; what matters is being ready.
“A Hit, a Very Palpable Hit”
Osric, judging the fencing match between Hamlet and Laertes, confirms Hamlet’s first touch. The phrase, meaning an obvious and undeniable point, is still used for a remark that strikes home.
“The Rest Is Silence”
Hamlet’s last words. The most talkative character in Shakespeare ends by falling silent, leaving Horatio to tell his story.
“Good Night, Sweet Prince”
Horatio, over Hamlet’s body: “Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince, / And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.” It is the play’s most tender farewell, and one of the most quoted epitaphs in English.
A Closer Reading: Why the Wisest Lines Come from the Wrong Mouths
Many of the play’s most quotable lines are spoken by characters who do not live by them, and that gap is part of the point.
“Brevity is the soul of wit” comes from the most long-winded man in Denmark. “To thine own self be true” comes from a father who sets a spy on his son. Claudius speaks eloquently of how prayer fails when the heart is unchanged, and goes on plotting murder. Even Gertrude’s “The lady doth protest too much” is aimed, without her knowing it, at a queen who remarried within weeks.
In a play about the difference between seeming and being, the quotations themselves are a lesson. Fine words cost nothing, and anyone can say them; the question Hamlet keeps asking is whether the speaker means them. When we lift these lines out of the play and hang them on walls, we keep the wisdom and forget the speaker, which is exactly the kind of mistake the characters in Elsinore keep making.
Common Questions
The questions readers ask most often about the quotations of Hamlet, answered briefly.
What Is the Most Famous Quote from Hamlet?
“To be or not to be, that is the question,” from Hamlet’s soliloquy in Act 3, scene 1. It is probably the most famous line in all of English literature.
Does Hamlet Say “I Knew Him Well”?
No. The line is “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio.” “I knew him well” is a common misquotation.
Who Says “Something Is Rotten in the State of Denmark”?
Marcellus, one of the guards, in Act 1, scene 4, not Hamlet. He says it as Hamlet follows the Ghost.
What Does “The Lady Doth Protest Too Much” Mean?
That the lady vows too much to be believed. In Shakespeare’s English, “protest” meant to declare or promise solemnly. Gertrude says it of the Player Queen, who swears she will never remarry.
What Are Hamlet’s Last Words?
“The rest is silence,” spoken after he names Fortinbras as the next king and asks Horatio to tell his story.
Related Reading
Three pages that take the language of Hamlet further.