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- To be, or not to be, that is the question:
- Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
- The slings and arrows or 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 heartache, 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 despised 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 make
- With a bare bodkin? Who would these fardels 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 awry
- And lose the name of action.