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.
                                 Macbeth, Act V, Scene V

    The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
    It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
    Upon the place beneath:

    it is twice blest;
    It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:

    'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
    The throned monarch better than his crown;

    His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
    The attribute to awe and majesty,
    Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;

    But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
    It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
    It is an attribute to God himself;

    And earthly power doth then show likest God's
    When mercy seasons justice.
                                 The Merchant of Venice, Act 4, Scene 1

    Is this a dagger which I see before me,
    The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.

    I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
    Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
    To feeling as to sight?

             or art thou but
    A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
    Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?

    I see thee yet, in form as palpable
    As this which now I draw...

    Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses,
    Or else worth all the rest;

                   I see thee still,
    And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,

                                                   Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 1

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:

    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...
                                       Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1