Hamlet: List of Essential Quotations for Leaving Cert - Leaving Cert Notes and Sample Answers

I am too much in the sun (Hamlet to Claudius)

the funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables (Hamlet to Horatio)

Frailty, thy name is woman! (Hamlet to himself)

“Seems,” madam? Nay, it is. I know not “seems.” (Hamlet to Gertrude)

For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god kissing carrion. (Hamlet to Polonius)

like a mildew’d ear (Hamlet to Gertrude)

To let this canker of our nature come
In further evil? (Hamlet to Horatio)

I essentially am not in madness, but mad in craft (Hamlet to Gertrude)

To put an antic disposition on (Hamlet to Ghost)

O cursèd spite,
That ever I was born to set it right! (Hamlet to Ghost)

The serpent that did sting thy father’s life now wears his crown (Ghost about Claudius)

that incestuous, that adulterate beast (Ghost about Claudius)

To be honest as this world goes is to be one man picked out of ten thousand (Hamlet to Polonius)

Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain! (Hamlet to himself)

O vengeance!
Why, what an ass am I! (Hamlet to himself)

These are but wild and whirling words (Horatio to Hamlet)

This above all: to thine own self be true. (Polonius to Laertes)

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. (Marcellus to Horatio)

Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t. (Polonius to himself)

How pregnant sometimes his replies are. (Polonius to himself)

Get thee to a nunnery (Hamlet to Ophelia)

Heavenly powers, restore him! (Ophelia to Hamlet/the Heavens)

The lady doth protest too much, methinks. (Gertrude to Hamlet)

I will speak daggers to her but use none.
My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites. (Hamlet to himself)

To be, or not to be: that is the question (Hamlet to himself)

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all (Hamlet to himself)

this is hire and salary, not revenge (Hamlet to himself)

O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! (Hamlet to himself)

What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me,
what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not
me: no, nor woman neither (Hamlet to himself)

My crown, mine own ambition, and my Queen (Claudius to himself)

How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience (Claudius to himself)

O! from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth! (Hamlet to himself)

There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will (Hamlet to Horatio)

How is it that the clouds still hang on you? (Claudius to Hamlet)

Hamlet’s “transformation” (Claudius to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern)

My too much changèd son (Gertrude to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern)

He’s loved of the distracted multitude (Claudius to attendants)

speaks things in doubt that carry but half sense (Gentleman to Gertrude)

The origin and commencement of his grief
Sprung from neglected love (Polonius to Claudius)

Go to, I’ll no more on ’t. It hath made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages (Hamlet to Ophelia)