The Undiscovered Country
Being a collection of sundry observations, set in good type.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time. And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet are of imagination all compact. One sees more devils than vast hell can hold; that is the madman. The lover, all as frantic, sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt. The poet’s eye, in fine frenzy rolling, doth glance from heaven to Earth, from Earth to heaven.
On the brevity of things
We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep. Our revels now are ended. These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits, and are melted into air, into thin air. And like the baseless fabric of this vision, the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself — yea, all which it inherit — shall dissolve.
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?