{"quotes":[{"text":"I could a tale unfold whose lightest wordWould harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres,Thy knotted and combined locks to part,And each particular hair to stand on endLike quills upon the fretful porpentine.But this eternal blazon must not beTo ears of flesh and blood.List, list, O list!","author":"William Shakespeare","tags":["fear","hamlet","hamlet-s-father","horror","storytelling","threats"],"id":1137,"author_id":"William+Shakespeare"},{"text":"This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. 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?","author":"William Shakespeare","tags":["hamlet","piece-of-work","quintessence-of-dust","shakespeare","soliloquy","william-shakespeare"],"id":28538,"author_id":"William+Shakespeare"},{"text":"...Imagine anybody having lived forty-five or fifty years without knowing Hamlet! One might as well spend one's life in a coal mine.","author":"Hector Berlioz","tags":["culture","hamlet","shakespeare"],"id":34042,"author_id":"Hector+Berlioz"},{"text":"More grief to hide than hate to utter love. Polonius, Hamlet.","author":"William Shakespeare","tags":["hamlet","polonius","shakespeare"],"id":37404,"author_id":"William+Shakespeare"},{"text":"If a story is no good, being based on Hamlet won't save it.","author":"Thomas C. Foster","tags":["bad-writing","hamlet","stories","writing"],"id":65728,"author_id":"Thomas+C.+Foster"},{"text":"That thing that Hamlet says - 'there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so'. Not quite true if you are stuck under a grand piano, not quite true for genocide, but surely it must be true about love?","author":"Deborah Meyler","tags":["genocide","hamlet","love","strength-of-mind","unrequited-love"],"id":71441,"author_id":"Deborah+Meyler"},{"text":"They are near the bottom of the food chain - a meal for fish and birds - while humans eat from the top of the food chain, consuming an astonishing array of what lies on the planet. But eventually, even we become food for the worms. Shakespeare saw this connection, writing in Hamlet, 'A man may fish with a worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of a fish that hath fed of that worm.","author":"Amy Stewart","tags":["amy-stewart","animal-science","biology","earth-science","earthworms","hamlet","william-shakespeare"],"id":96625,"author_id":"Amy+Stewart"},{"text":"The rest is silence.","author":"William Shakespeare","tags":["hamlet","last-words","shakespeare"],"id":97352,"author_id":"William+Shakespeare"},{"text":"Pretend to be mad and talk a lot. Then — and this is the important bit — do nothing at all until you absolutely have to and then make sure everyone dies.","author":"Jasper Fforde","tags":["hamlet","humour"],"id":99175,"author_id":"Jasper+Fforde"},{"text":"Ivanov: No, my clever young thing, it's not a question of romance. I say as before God that I will endure everything - depression and mental illness and ruin and the loss of my wife and premature old age and loneliness - but I cannot tolerate, cannot endure being ridiculous in my own eyes. I'm dying of shame at the thought that I, a healthy, strong man, have turned into some sort of Hamlet or Manfred, some sort of 'superfluous man'... Devil knows precisely what! There are pitiful people who are flattered by being called Hamlet or superfluous men, but for me it's a disgrace! It stirs up my pride, I'm overcome by shame and I suffer...","author":"Anton Chekhov","tags":["hamlet","loneliness","shame"],"id":102614,"author_id":"Anton+Chekhov"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":51,"pages":6,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}