These Hamlet Revenge Quotes Will Help You Plot Your Vengeance

hamlet movie
Hamlet via Sony Pictures Releasing

Don't be shocked when these sound familiar.

Ashley Ferraro

Unforgettable Hamlet Quotes

Hamlet has gone down in history of one of Shakespeare's best tragedies. Maybe it's the strange sense of relatability, or perhaps it's the quotability. Either way, this play has become one to remember.

One of the main themes of Hamlet is revenge. If these quotes start giving you flashbacks to your high school English class, that means we've done something right. But really, reading this play can surface all kinds of emotions.

Allow these Shakespeare quotes from Hamlet to change your perspective. Not everything is as it seems, and sometimes the truth hurts. You'll love the message behind this story a little extra today.

Best Hamlet Quotes

  • "Goodnight, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!" - Horatio

  • "Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder" - The Ghost

  • "Haste me to know 't, that I, with wings as swift As meditation or the thoughts of love, May sweep to my revenge." - Hamlet

  • "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." - Polonius

  • "That one may smile and smile and be a villain." - Hamlet

  • "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in our philosophy." - Hamlet

  • "Brevity is the soul of wit." - Polonius

  • "And so he goes to heaven, And so am I revenged. That would be scanned: A villain kills my father, and for that, I, his sole son, do this same villain send To heaven." - Hamlet

  • "I dare damnation. To this point I stand, That both the worlds I give to negligence, Let come what comes, only I'll be revenged Most thoroughly for my father." - Laertes

Noteworthy Hamlet Quotes

  • "No place indeed should murder sanctuarize; Revenge should have no bounds." - Claudius

  • "I was born to set it right." - Hamlet

  • "O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!" - Hamlet

  • "Listen to many, speak to a few." - Polonius

  • "Neither a borrower nor a lender be, For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry." - Polonius

  • "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark." - Marcellus

  • "Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t." - Polonius

  • "O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!" - Hamlet

  • "O horrible, O horrible, most horrible! If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not. Let not the royal bed of Denmark be A couch for luxury and damnèd incest." - The Ghost

Memorable Hamlet Quotes

  • "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so." - Hamlet

  • "God hath given you one face, and you make yourself another." - Hamlet

  • "To be, or not to be, that is the question." - Hamlet

  • "To die, to sleep – To sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there’s the rub, For in this sleep of death what dreams may come…" - Hamlet

  • "The lady protests too much, methinks." - Gertrude

  • "I must be cruel only to be kind; Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind." - Hamlet

  • "How all occasions do inform against me, and spur my dull revenge." - Hamlet

  • "Goodnight, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!" - Horatio

  • "The rest is silence." - Hamlet

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