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. . . 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.
quote by Alfred North Whitehead
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Related quotes
Laertes: Farewell, Ophelia, and remember well
What I have said to you.
Ophelia: ‘Tis in my memory lock’d,
And you yourself shall keep the key of it.
line from Hamlet, Act I, Scene 3 by William Shakespeare (1599)
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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Queen Gertrude: And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish
That your good beauties be the happy cause
Of Hamlet's wildness: so shall I hope your virtues
Will bring him to his wonted way again,
To both your honours.
line from Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1 by William Shakespeare (1599)
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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Ophelia is Drowning
Ophelia is drowning,
And she is not afraid,
She thinks death quite romantic
At 20 she is already an old maid.
Ophelia is drowning
In a view for all too see
In a unrequited suicide
For a love such as he.
Ophelia is drowning,
Her faded fingers hold a wedding bouquet,
And the water fills her lungs
She will never see her wedding day.
15/04/07
poem by Charlie F. Kane
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John Bunny, Motion Picture Comedian
In which he is remembered in similitude, by reference to Yorick,
the king’s jester, who died when Hamlet and Ophelia were children.
Yorick is dead. Boy Hamlet walks forlorn
Beneath the battlements of Elsinore.
Where are those oddities and capers now
That used to “set the table on a roar”?
And do his bauble-bells beyond the clouds
Ring out, and shake with mirth the planets bright?
No doubt he brings the blessed dead good cheer,
But silence broods on Elsinore tonight.
That little elf, Ophelia, eight years old,
Upon her battered doll’s staunch bosom weeps.
(”O best of men, that wove glad fairy-tales.”)
With tear-burned face, at last the darling sleeps.
Hamlet himself could not give cheer or help,
Though firm and brave, with his boy-face controlled.
For every game they started out to play
Yorick invented, in the days of old.
The times are out of joint! O cursed spite!
The noble jester Yorick comes no more.
And Hamlet hides his tears in boyish pride
By some lone turret-stair of Elsinore.
poem by Vachel Lindsay
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Hamlet: The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.
line from Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1 by William Shakespeare (1599)
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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Hamlet: I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum.
line from Hamlet, Act V, Scene 1 by William Shakespeare (1599)
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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Ophelia: Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be.
line from Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5 by William Shakespeare
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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Ophelia: You are keen my lord, you are keen.
Hamlet: It would cost you a groaning to take off mine edge.
line from Hamlet by William Shakespeare (1599)
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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A Silly Poem
Said Hamlet to Ophelia,
I'll draw a sketch of thee,
What kind of pencil shall I use?
2B or not 2B?
poem by Spike Milligan
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Laertes: Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia, and therefore I forbid my tears.
line from Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 7 by William Shakespeare (1599)
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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Ophelia: That unmatched form and feature of blown youth
Blasted with ecstasy. Oh, woe is me,
T' have seen what I have seen, see what I see!
line from Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1 by William Shakespeare (1599)
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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Ophelia: To the noble mind rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
line from Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1 by William Shakespeare (1599)
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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One of the advantages of appearing in such a play is that you begin to understand it properly, I feel Ophelia's tragedy was that she had been so used by everybody and felt that she bore a great burden of guilt.
quote by Lalla Ward
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work.
quote by John Von Neumann
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work.
quote by Johann Von Neumann
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Ophelia: O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!
The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword;
The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
Th’ observed of all observers, quite, quite down!
line from Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1 by William Shakespeare (1599)
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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Polonius: Good madam, stay awhile; I will be faithful. [Reads.]
‘Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.
‘O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers;
I have not art to reckon my groans: but that
I love thee best, O most best, believe it. Adieu.
‘Thine evermore, most dear lady, whilst this machine is to him,
HAMLET.’
line from Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2 by William Shakespeare (1599)
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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Lapis Lazuli
(For Harry Clifton)
I HAVE heard that hysterical women say
They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow.
Of poets that are always gay,
For everybody knows or else should know
That if nothing drastic is done
Aeroplane and Zeppelin will come out.
Pitch like King Billy bomb-balls in
Until the town lie beaten flat.
All perform their tragic play,
There struts Hamlet, there is Lear,
That's Ophelia, that Cordelia;
Yet they, should the last scene be there,
The great stage curtain about to drop,
If worthy their prominent part in the play,
Do not break up their lines to weep.
They know that Hamlet and Lear are gay;
Gaiety transfiguring all that dread.
All men have aimed at, found and lost;
Black out; Heaven blazing into the head:
Tragedy wrought to its uttermost.
Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages,
And all the drop-scenes drop at once
Upon a hundred thousand stages,
It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.
On their own feet they came, or On shipboard,'
Camel-back; horse-back, ass-back, mule-back,
Old civilisations put to the sword.
Then they and their wisdom went to rack:
No handiwork of Callimachus,
Who handled marble as if it were bronze,
Made draperies that seemed to rise
When sea-wind swept the corner, stands;
His long lamp-chimney shaped like the stem
Of a slender palm, stood but a day;
All things fall and are built again,
And those that build them again are gay.
Two Chinamen, behind them a third,
Are carved in lapis lazuli,
Over them flies a long-legged bird,
A symbol of longevity;
The third, doubtless a serving-man,
Carries a musical instmment.
Every discoloration of the stone,
Every accidental crack or dent,
Seems a water-course or an avalanche,
Or lofty slope where it still snows
Though doubtless plum or cherry-branch
Sweetens the little half-way house
Those Chinamen climb towards, and I
Delight to imagine them seated there;
There, on the mountain and the sky,
On all the tragic scene they stare.
One asks for mournful melodies;
Accomplished fingers begin to play.
Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,
Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.
poem by William Butler Yeats
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Doobie or not Doobie
Doobie or not Doobie-
What was Prospero smoking?
Up on the ramparts of Elsinore
What was our Hamlet toking?
Did fair Ophelia steal his stash
and roll herself a Doobie?
Did she go off the deep end then
because she was a newbie?
Cannabis was to Shakespeare known
as a potent source of Hemp.
It may have made a dancing fool
out of old Will Kemp.
But please do not disturb his bones,
beware the potent curse.
The Bard of Avon had wit enough
without inhaling first.
poem by John F. McCullagh
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Lessons of English
When Desdemona sang a ditty-
In her last hours among the living-
It wasn't love that she lamented,
And not her star-she mourned a willow.
When Desdemona started singing,
With tears near choking off her voice,
Her evil demon for her evil day
Stored up of weeping rills a choice.
And when Ophelia sang a ballad-
In her last hours among the living-
All dryness of her soul was carried
Aloft by gusts of wind, like cinders.
The day Ophelia started singing,
By bitterness of daydreams jaded,
What trophies did she clutch, when sinking?
A bunch of buttercups and daisies.
Their shoulders stripped of passion's tatters,
They took, their hearts a-quake with fear,
The Universe's chilly baptism-
To stun their loving forms with spheres.
poem by Boris Pasternak
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