To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind, to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune; Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And, by opposing, end them? To die--to sleep-- No more; and, by a sleep, to say we end The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to--'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished: to die, to sleep; To sleep! perchance to dream; ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect, That makes calamity of so long life: For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of disprized love, the law's delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus take With a bare bodkin?[98] Who would fardels[99] bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life; But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered country, from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will; And makes us rather bear those ills we have, Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment, With this regard, their currents turn away And lose the name of action.
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.
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, And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack[100] behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded[101] with a sleep.