Quotes & Sayings About Ophelia In Hamlet

That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty. — William Shakespeare

You Jig, you amble, and you lisp. — William Shakespeare

Said Hamlet to Ophelia,
I'll draw a sketch of thee.
What kind of pencil shall I use?
2B or not 2B? — Spike Milligan

If I have to do battle with you a thousand times to prove my point, I'll do it.'
The queen unwisely asked, 'But to prove what point, my dear Hamlet?'
'That I loved Ophelia! Fifty thousand brothers, with all the love they can summon, would not equal my love for here. Ophelia, Ophelia. — John Marsden

What I love in a woman is not what she is in and for herself, but the side of herself she turns towards me, what she is for me. I love her as character in our common love story. what wuld Hamlet be without the castle at Elsinore, without Ophelia, without all the concrete situations he goes through, what would he be without the text of his part? What would be left but an empty, dumb, illusory essence? — Milan Kundera

Hamlet: Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring? Ophelia: 'Tis brief, my lord. Hamlet: As woman's love. — William Shakespeare

Hamlet: Lady, shall I lie in your lap? Ophelia: No, my lord. Hamlet: DId you think I meant country matters? Ophelia: I think nothing, my lord. Hamlet: That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs. Ophelia: What is, my lord? Hamlet: Nothing. — William Shakespeare

You speak like a green girl / unsifted in such perilous circumstances. — William Shakespeare

I do not set my life at a pin's fee,
And for my soul, what can it do to that,
Being a thing immortal as itself? — William Shakespeare

As Hamlet said to Ophelia, "God has given you one face, and you make yourself another." The battle between these two halves of identity...Who we are and who we pretend to be, is unwinnable. "Just as there are two sides to every story, there are two sides to every person. One that we reveal to the world and another we keep hidden inside. A duality governed by the balance of light and darkness, within each of us is the capacity for both good and evil. But those who are able to blur the moral dividing line hold the true power. — Emily Thorne

Some people consider the way Shakespeare was writing about Ophelia as erotomania-that she was delusional in thinking that Hamlet was in love with her. But I don't think so. — Jack White

Pray, love, remember: and there is pansies, that's for thoughts. — William Shakespeare

I will not go so far as to say that to construct a history of thought without profound study of the mathematical ideas of successive epochs is like omitting Hamlet from the play which is named after him. That would be claiming too much. But it is certainly analogous to cutting out the part of Ophelia. This simile is singularly exact. For Ophelia is quite essential to the play, she is very charming ... and a little mad. — Alfred North Whitehead

Imagine the same scene in HAMLET if Pullman had written it. Hamlet, using a mystic pearl, places the poison in the cup to kill Claudius. We are all told Claudius will die by drinking the cup. Then Claudius dies choking on a chicken bone at lunch. Then the Queen dies when Horatio shows her the magical Mirror of Death. This mirror appears in no previous scene, nor is it explained why it exists. Then Ophelia summons up the Ghost from Act One and kills it, while she makes a speech denouncing the evils of religion. Ophelia and Hamlet are parted, as it is revealed in the last act that a curse will befall them if they do not part ways. — John C. Wright

She had spears of straw and grass in her hair, not like Ophelia gone mad through contact with Hamlet's madness, but because she had slept in some stable loft. — Victor Hugo

He is dead and gone, lady, He is dead and gone; At his head a grass-green turf, At his heels a stone. — William Shakespeare

Mr Bott sits down and gestures gracefully to the board. "As you are clearly both fascinated by this text, would you like to explain the significance of Laertes in Hamlet?" He looks at Alexa. "Please go first, Miss Roberts."
"Well ... " Alexa says hesitantly. "He's Ophelia's brother, right?"
"I didn't ask for his family tree, Alexa. I want to know his literary significance as a fictional character."
Alexa looks uncomfortable. "Well then, his literary significance is in being Ophelia's brother, isn't it? So she has someone to hang out with."
"How very kind of Shakespeare to give fictional Ophelia a fictional playmate so that she doesn't get fictionally bored. Your analytical skills astound me, Alexa. Perhaps I should send you to Set Seven with Mrs White and you can spend the rest of the lesson studying Thomas the Tank Engine. I believe he has lots of buddies too. — Holly Smale

Why, what should be the fear?
I do not set my life at a pin's fee. — William Shakespeare

I will probably die a misunderstood virgin like Ophelia in HAMLET, only I won't do it by floating down a stream, singing my own mad song. They'll just find me here, on my bed, on a weekend night, my dead body slumped over a homework assignment.
Hopefully they'll discover me before Teeny eats my remains. — Stephanie Wardrop

The madness of the eyes is the lure of the abyss. Sirens lurk in the dark depths of the pupils as they lurk at the bottom of the sea, that I know for sure - but I have never encountered them, and I am searching still for the profound and plaintive gazes in whose depths I might be able, like Hamlet redeemed, to drown the Ophelia of my desire. — Jean Lorrain

The time is out of joint : O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right! — William Shakespeare

Lay her i' the earth: And from her fair and unpolluted flesh May violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest, A ministering angel shall my sister be, When thou liest howling. HAMLET. What, the fair Ophelia! QUEEN GERTRUDE. Sweets to the sweet: farewell! — William Shakespeare

Be patient, Ophelia.

Love,
Hamlet — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

If we divide human attributes into "masculine" and "feminine" and strengthen only those attributes that "belong" to that sex, we cut off half of ourselves from ourselves as human beings, condemned forever to search for our other half. The world is in desperate need of multilayered human beings with the voices, stamina, and insight to break through our current calcified ways of doing things, (...) The patriarchal structures of honor, shame, violence, and might is right, do as much harm to Hamlet, Edgar, Lear, and Coriolanus as they do to Ophelia, Desdemona, Lady Macduff (...)
(...) To have feelings, intuitive flights of understanding, a desire to have knowledge of what is happening below the surface, to serve. These are often called "feminine" attributes, and it is true that many women in the plays possess them. But they also belong to Kent, Ferdinand, Florizel, Camillo, as well as the women. So they are not "feminine" attributes: they are human attributes. — Tina Packer

Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered! — William Shakespeare

I took the role of Ophelia in Hamlet because she is so naive, loving, and innocent. — Julia Stiles

I read the miserable story of the play in which she was the one true loving soul. It obviously described the spread of an epidemic brain fever which, like typhoid, was perhaps caused by seepings from the palace graveyard into the Elsinore water supply. From an inconspicuous start among sentries on the battlements the infection spread through prince, king, prime minister and courtiers causing hallucinations, logomania and paranoia resulting in insane suspicions and murderous impulses. I imagined myself entering the palace quite early in the drama with all the executive powers of an efficient public health officer. The main carriers of the disease (Claudius, Polonius and the obviously incurable Hamlet) would he quarantined in separate wards. A fresh water supply and efficient modern plumbing would soon set the Danish state right and Ophelia, seeing this gruff Scottish doctor pointing her people toward a clean and healthy future, would be powerless to withhold her love. — Alasdair Gray

Alone in my chamber, I fairly trembled with excitement. How could it be that I, who had never been kissed before, had kissed the Prince of Denmark himself, not once but many times? Did he really speak to me of love? It was beyond belief that I, humble Ophelia, should be wooed by Prince Hamlet. Surely I had imagined it. — Lisa M. Klein

I look forward to the day when indigenous actors can play Hamlet and Ophelia and not just Othello and Desdemona. — Shari Sebbens

[Shakespeare realized that] Women are able to understand themselves better on a personal level and survive in the world if they dress in men's clothing, thus living underground, safe (...). The presence of women disguising themselves as men dictates that the play be a comedy; women remaining in their frocks, a tragedy. In four great tragedies -Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear- almost all the women die (...).
How much the women have to adhere to the rules and regulations of their enviroment makes a large difference. Once Rosalind [disguised as a man in As You Like It] has run away from the court, she has no institutional structures to deal with. Ophelia [in her frocks] is surrounded tightly by institutional structures of family, court, and politics; only by going mad can be get out of it all. — Tina Packer

But to my mind, though I am native here, And to the manner born, it is a custom, More honored in the breach than the observance. — William Shakespeare