| A speech. -
06-12-03
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 heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to; 'tis a consumnation devoutly to be wished.
To die, to sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream...
Aye, 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 opressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely? The pangs of dipriz'd 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 fardles bear to grunt and sweat under a weary life- but that the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveler returns, puzzles the will, and makes us rather bear those ills we have, than fly to ones we know not of.
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied oe'r with the pale cast of thought- and enterprises of great pitch and moment, with this regard their currents turn awry...and lose the name of action. When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more.
- John Adams
Last edited by Dark Messiah : 06-12-03 at 17:27.
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