Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune

“…the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,…”

Hamlet

“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 wish’d.

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 fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d 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.

—Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph,

in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember’d”

Shakespeare