OPHELIA. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty? HAMLET. Ay, truly, for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness. This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once. OPHELIA. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so. HAMLET. You should not have believed me, for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not. OPHELIA. I was the more deceived. HAMLET. Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offenses at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery.
hamlet, acte III, scène 1
