To Be, or Not To Be - William Shakespeare  
  
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 flash is heir to, tis a consummation  
Devoutly to be wished. 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. There's the respect  
That makes calamity of so long life;  
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,  
The pangs of disprized 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 undiscovered country from whose bourn  
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,  
And make us rather bear those ills we have  
Than fly to others that we know not of?  
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;  
And thus the native hue of resolution  
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought  
And enterprises of great pith and moment  
With this regard their currents turn away,  
And lose the name of action.  
  
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)