Greatness

Last week was Shakespeare's day (people believe he was born and died on the same day - April 23rd).

My favorite passage of his is from Hamlet, and it takes place when Hamlet is anguishing on whether he should or not kill the king. Here it is:

"What is a man
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.
Sure he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and godlike reason
To fust in us unused. Now whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on th’event –
A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward – I do not know
Why yet I live to say this thing’s to do,
Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means
To do’t. Examples gross as earth exhort me,
Witness this army of such mass and charge,
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit, with divine ambition puffed,
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,
Even for an eggshell. Rightly to be great
Is not stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour’s at the stake."