Polonius Quotes

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

I do know when the blood burns, how prodigal the soul lends the tongue vows.

Lord Polonius: What do you read, my lord? Hamlet: Words, words, words. Lord Polonius: What is the matter, my lord? Hamlet: Between who? Lord Polonius: I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.

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

Where is Polonius? HAMLET In heaven. Send hither to see. If your messenger find him not there, seek him i' th' other place yourself. But if indeed you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.

Will you walk out of the air, my lord? HAMLET Into my grave.

You speak like a green girl / unsifted in such perilous circumstances.

A violet in the youth of primy nature, Forward, not permanent--sweet, not lasting; The perfume and suppliance of a minute; No more.

Tis in my memory lock'd, And you yourself shall keep the key of it.

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.

POLONIUS: What do you read, my lord? HAMLET: Words, words, words.

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below

Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

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

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

More matter with less art.

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!

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

A man can smile and smile and be a villain.

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

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

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

There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

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

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

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

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.

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.

Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel? Polonius: By the mass, and ‘tis like a camel, indeed. Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel. Polonius: It is backed like a weasel. Hamlet: Or like a whale? Polonius: Very like a whale.

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.

I will be brief. Your noble son is mad.

This is the very ecstasy of love.

[S]ince brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief.

But to my mind, though I am native here, And to the manner born, it is a custom, More honored in the breach than the observance.

From this time forth My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!

Neither a borrower nor a lender be, for loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

Beware Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in, Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice; Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy; For the apparel oft proclaims the man.

The apparel oft proclaims the man.

Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.

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

Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade.

This above all; to thine own self be true.

To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.