Hamlet IV, V

Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting,

That would not let me sleep: methought I lay

Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly,

And prais'd be rashness for it, let us know,

Our indiscretion sometime serves us well

When our deep plots do pall, and that should learn us

There's a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will. (V.ii.4-11) I liked this phrase because it helped me understand Hamlet's views on destiny a little bit better and make sense of his behavior.  A large portion of Hamlet's action really was in-action.  He didn't come out and tell other's about his father's murder because the informant was a ghost...  He loves Ophelia but doesn't really put any effort into her...  He didn't kill Claudius when he had the chance to because he was praying and didn't want to risk sending him to heaven...   Hamlet kind of just lets things happen around him - and I think that in part it's because he believes that everyone has a destiny and so (partly) it doesn't matter what he does because these people are going to get what's coming to them no matter what... I did some reading on Shakespeare and what he was happening in his life around the time that he wrote Hamlet to maybe see if there was any insight as to Hamlet's state of mind.  It turns out that Shakespeare had lost a son right around the time that he was writing Hamlet.  I had previously thought that Hamlet was a mastermind because he was brilliant and was a very good actor.  Now, after having watched Kenneth Branagh's version and learning that Shakespeare was going through his own tragedy, I think that Hamlet swerves back and forth between insanity and genius.