Yorick Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Yorick. Here they are! All 34 of them:

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?
William Shakespeare (Hamlet)
Alas, poor Yorick!" he said. "She heard mermaids, so it follows that there is something rotten in the state of Denmark. I have caught an everlasting cold, but luckily I am terribly dishonest. I cling to that.
Diana Wynne Jones (Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle, #1))
A is for Amy who fell down the stairs. B is for Basil assaulted by bears. C is for Clara who wasted away. D is for Desmond thrown out of a sleigh. E is for Ernest who choked on a peach. F is for Fanny sucked dry by a leech. G is for George smothered under a rug. H is for Hector done in by a thug. I is for Ida who drowned in a lake. J is for James who took lye by mistake. K is for Kate who was struck with an axe. L is for Leo who choked on some tacks. M is for Maud who was swept out to sea. N is for Neville who died of ennui. O is for Olive run through with an awl. P is for Prue trampled flat in a brawl. Q is for Quentin who sank on a mire. R is for Rhoda consumed by a fire. S is for Susan who perished of fits. T is for Titus who flew into bits. U is for Una who slipped down a drain. V is for Victor squashed under a train. W is for Winnie embedded in ice. X is for Xerxes devoured by mice. Y is for Yorick whose head was bashed in. Z is for Zillah who drank too much gin.
Edward Gorey
You’d better get busy, though, buddy. The goddamn sands run out on you every time you turn around. I know what I’m talking about. You’re lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddamn phenomenal world. {...} I used to worry about that. I don’t worry about it very much any more. At least I’m still in love with Yorick’s skull. At least I always have time enough to stay in love with Yorick’s skull. I want an honorable goddamn skull when I’m dead, buddy. I hanker after an honorable goddamn skull like Yorick’s.
J.D. Salinger (Franny and Zooey)
Danny strolled to the town common, sat on one of the benches in Teenytown and took one of the bottles out of the bag, looking down on it like Hamlet with Yorick's skull
Stephen King (Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2))
Alas, poor YORICK!
Laurence Sterne (The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman)
Back into your box, anonymous Yorick, with your sutured eyes and frozen scream! The indignity of your internment is no worse than ours.
Rick Yancey (The Monstrumologist (The Monstrumologist, #1))
At least I'm still in love with Yorick's skull. At least I always have time enough to stay in love with Yorick's skull. I want an honorable goddam skull when I'm dead, buddy. I hanker after an honorable goddam skull like Yorick's.
J.D. Salinger (Franny and Zooey)
And so Yorick did not become a good citizen, but a Hamlet, a fool.
Günter Grass (The Tin Drum)
What makes the prospect of death distinctive in the modern age is the background of permanent technological and sociological revolution against which it is set, and which serves to strip us of any possible faith in the permanence of our labours. Our ancestors could believe that their achievements had a chance of bearing up against the flow of events. We know time to be a hurricane. Our buildings, our sense of style, our ideas, all of these will soon enough be anachronisms, and the machines in which we now take inordinate pride will seem no less bathetic than Yorick's skull.
Alain de Botton (The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work)
Your writing blows, by the by. You split more infinitives than Gene Roddenberry.
Brian K. Vaughan (Y: The Last Man, Vol. 7: Paper Dolls)
They hold their phones out like Hamlet addressing Yorick's skull...
Chase Novak (Breed)
I once witnessed a rather unfortunate production of Shakespeare's Hamlet - the lead actor didn't know his existential angst from his iambic pentameter and, alas, poor Yorick was a bemused bystander.
Stewart Stafford
Dat ze iemand blij kon maken met zoiets als een glas limonade bracht haar een gevoel van heel simpel geluk. Het soort geluk dat nergens van afhing, dat er gewoon altijd wel was en je af en toe terloops even aanraakte.
Yorick Goldewijk (Films die nergens draaien)
He picked the skull out of the sink and held it in one hand, mournfully. “Alas, poor Yorick!” he said. “She heard mermaids, so it follows there is something rotten in the state of Denmark.
Diana Wynne Jones (Howl's Moving Castle)
« A bit of useful information. My name is Victoria “call me Vicki” DeVine. I used to be Mrs. Yorick Dane, but giving up my married name was one of the conditions of my receiving valuable property—aka The Jumble—as part of the divorce settlement. Apparently the second official Mrs. Dane didn’t like the idea that someone else had had the name first. Fortunately, she didn’t seem as possessive about Yorick’s Vigorous Appendage. I could have told her that a couple dozen other women had had it before she took possession. But it wasn’t likely that she would keep solo possession of the appendage for long, so let her figure things out the hard way like I did. Of course, if she had been one of those indulgences, then she already knew the signs and might be able to nip them in the bud. »
Anne Bishop (Lake Silence (The World of the Others, #1; The Others, #6))
ACCIACCATURA and ALEMBIC, LATRODECTUS MACTANS and NEUTRAL DENSITY POINT, CHIAROSCURO and PROPRIOCEPTION and TESTUDO and ANNULATE and BRICOLAGE and CATALEPT and GERRYMANDER and SCOPOPHILIA and LAERTES—and all of a sudden it occurs to Gately the aforethought EXTRUDING, STRIGIL and LEXICAL themselves—and LORDOSIS and IMPOST and SINISTRAL and MENISCUS and CHRONAXY and POOR YORICK and LUCULUS and CERISE MONTCLAIR and then DE SICA NEO-REAL CRANE DOLLY and CIRCUMAMBIENTFOUNDDRAMALEVIRATEMARRIAGE
David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest)
Yorick tenía por naturaleza una antipatía y una aversión invencibles hacia la seriedad;—no hacia la seriedad como tal;—pues cuando se requería seriedad él era el más serio o grave de los mortales durante días y semanas enteras;—sino que era un acérrimo enemigo de ella cuando se la afectaba, y sólo le declaraba la guerra abierta cuando aparecía como tapadera para la ignorancia o la sandez; y cada vez que se le cruzaba en el camino de esta guisa, por muy cobijada y protegida que estuviese——en contadas ocasiones le daba ningún cuartel.
Laurence Sterne (Tristram Shandy)
Sometimes, in his wild way of talking, he would say, that Gravity was an errant scoundrel, and he would add,—of the most dangerous kind too,—because a sly one; and that he verily believed, more honest, well-meaning people were bubbled out of their goods and money by it in one twelve-month, than by pocket-picking and shop-lifting in seven. In the naked temper which a merry heart discovered, he would say there was no danger,—but to itself:—whereas the very essence of gravity was design, and consequently deceit;—’twas a taught trick to gain credit of the world for more sense and knowledge than a man was worth; and that, with all its pretensions,—it was no better, but often worse, than what a French wit had long ago defined it,—viz. A mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind;—which definition of gravity, Yorick, with great imprudence, would say, deserved to be wrote in letters of gold.
Laurence Sterne (The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman)
Po chvíli se opět vynořil, třímaje v rukou lebku. Na rozdíl od anatomických preparátů, jak je znal Divák ze školy, z obchodů s potřebami pro mediky apod., neměla lebka dolní čelist a nebyla bílá, ale žlutavě zahnědlá. Hrobník ji nastavil proti Divákovi. Po tváři mú přeletěl ironický ušlápnutý úsměv: „Alas poor Yorick, I knew him well, Horatio,“ řekl hrobník. Okolnost, že hrobař zacitoval Shakespeara v originále, Diváka příliš nepřekvapila, jako asi nepřekvapuje ani současného českého čtenáře. Jen pro možné čtenáře budoucí a pro cizince poznamenejme, že inteligent, konající nádenickou práci, je ve vlastech českých zjev značně známý a banální. Kromě sporadičtějších individuálních případů, které nastávají pořád, proběhlo masovější třídní zničení zejména ve dvou vlnách: Po roce čtyřicet osm, kdy se hyeny ujaly vlády a nemohly se nasytit moci, a pak znovu po nezdařené plastické chirurgii roku šedesát osm, či správně šedesátého osmého, kdy se někteří naivkové pokusili přeopravovat tvář Šelmy na lidskou.
Jan Křesadlo (Království české a jiné polokatolické povídky)
Infinite Jest (V?). Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar. Poor Yorick Entertainment Unlimited. 'Madame Psychosis' ; no other definitive data. Thorny problem for archivists. Incandenza's last film, Incandenza's death occurring during its post-production. Most archival authorities list as unfinished, unseen. Some list as completion of Infinite Jest (IV), for which Incandenza also used 'Psychosis,' thus list the film under Incandenza's output for Y.T.M.P. Though no scholarly synopsis or report of viewing exists, two short essays in different issues of Cartridge Quarterly East refer to to film as 'extraordinary' and 'far away [James O. Incandenza's] most entertaining and compelling work.' West Coast archivists list the film's gauge as '16...78... n mm.,' basing the gauge on critical allusions to 'radical experiments in viewers' optical perspective and context' as IJ (V?)'s distinctive feature. Though Canadian archivist Tete-Beche lists the film as completed and privately distributed by P.Y.E.U. through posthumous provisions in the filmmaker's will, all other comprehensive filmographies have the film either unfinished or UNRELEASED, its Master cartridge either destroyed or vaulted sui testator.
David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest)
Yorick's Used and Rare Books had a small storefront on Channing but a deep interior shaded by tall bookcases crammed with history, poetry, theology, antiquated anthologies. There was no open wall space to hang the framed prints for sale, so Hogarth's scenes of lust, pride, and debauchery leaned rakishly against piles of novels, folk tales, and literary theory. In the back room these piles were so tall and dusty that they took on a geological air, rising like stalagmites. Jess often felt her workplace was a secret mine or quarry where she could pry crystals from crevices and sweep precious jewels straight off the floor. As she tended crowded shelves, she opened one volume and then another, turning pages on the history of gardens, perusing Edna St. Vincent Millay: "We were very tired, were very merry, / We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry..." dipping into Gibbon: "The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay..." and old translations of Grimm's Fairy Tales: "They walked the whole day over meadows, fields, and stony places. And when it rained, the little sister said, 'Heaven and our hearts are weeping together...
Allegra Goodman (The Cookbook Collector)
It was in Oklahoma, within a month of her arrival, that they established the Fuck Yorick School of Forensics. This was not just a principle of necessary levity but the name of their bowling team. Wherever she worked, first in Oklahoma, then in Arizona, her cohorts ended the evenings with beer in one hand, a cheese taco in the other, cheering or insulting teams and scuffing along the edges of the bowling alleys in their shoes from the planet Andromeda. She had loved the Southwest, missed being one of the boys, and was now light-years beyond the character she had been in London. They would go through a heavy day’s work load, then drive to the wild suburban bars and clubs on the outskirts of Tulsa or Norman, with Sam Cooke in their hearts. In the greenroom a list was tacked up of every bowling alley in Oklahoma with a liquor license. They ignored job offers that came from dry counties. They snuffed out death with music and craziness. The warnings of carpe diem were on gurneys in the hall. They heard the rhetoric of death over the intercom; ‘vaporization’ or ‘microfragmentation’ meant the customer in question had been blown to bits. They couldn’t miss death, it was in every texture and cell around them. No one changed the radio dial in a morgue without a glove on.
Michael Ondaatje (Anil's Ghost)
Lucifer Sansfoi Varlet Sansfoi Omer Perdiu I.B.Perdie Billy Perdy I'll unwind your guts from Durham to Dover and bury em in Clover-- Your psalms I'll 'ave engraved in your toothbone-- Your victories nilled-- You jailed under under a woman's skirt of stone-- Stone blind woman with no guts and only a scale-- Your thoughts & letters Shandy'd about in Beth (Gaelic for grave) Your philosophies run up your nose again-- Your confidences and essays bandied in ballrooms from switchblade to switchblade --Your final duel with sledge hammers-- Your essential secret twinned to buttercups & dying-- Your guide to 32 European cities scabbed in Isaiah --Your red beard snobbed in Dolmen ruins in the editions of the Bleak-- Your saints and Consolations bereft --Your handy volume rolled into an urn-- And your father And mother besmeared at thought of you th'unspent begotless crop of worms --You lay there, you queen for a day, wait for the "fun- sucked frogs" to carp at you Your sweety beauty discovered by No Name in its hidingplace till burrs Part from you from lack of issue, sinew, all the rest-- Gibbering quiver graveryard Hoo! The hospital that buries you be Baal, the digger Yorick, & the shoveler groom-- My rosy tomatoes pop squirting from your awful rotten grave-- Your profile, erstwhile Garboesque, mistook by earth- eels for some fjord to Sheol-- And your timid voice box strangled by lie-hating earth forever. May the plighted Noah-clouds dissolve in grief of you-- May Red clay be your center, & woven into necks, of hogs, boars, booters & pilferers & burned down with Stalin, Hitler & the rest-- May you bite your lip that you cannot meet with God-- or Beat me to a pub --Amen The Almoner, his cup hat no bottom, nor I a brim. Devil, get thee back to the russet caves.
Jack Kerouac (Scattered Poems)
How long will a man lie i’th earth ere he rot ? Clow. Fayth if a be not rotten before a die, as we haue many pockie corſes, that will ſcarce hold the laying in, a will laſt you ſom eyght yeere, or nine yeere. A Tanner will laſt you nine yeere. Ham. Why he more then another ? Clow. Why ſir, his hide is ſo tand with his trade, that a will keepe out water a great while ; & your water is a ſore decayer of your whorſon dead body, heer's a ſcull now hath lyen you i'th earth 23. yeeres. Ham. Whoſe was it ? Clow. A whorſon mad fellowes it was, whoſe do you think it was ? Ham. Nay I know not. Clow. A peſtilence on him for a madde rogue, a pourd a flagon of Reniſh on my head once ; this ſame skull ſir, was ſir Yoricks skull, the Kings Iester. Ham. This ? Clow. Een that. Ham. Alas poore Yorick, I knew him Horatio, a fellow of infinite ieſt, of moſt excellent fancie, hee hath bore me on his backe a thouſand times, and now how abhorred in my imagination it is: my gorge riſes at it. Heere hung thoſe lyppes that I haue kiſt I know not howe oft, where be your gibes now ? your gamboles, your ſongs, your flaſhes of merriment, that were wont to ſet the table on a roare, not one now to mocke your owne grinning, quite chapfalne. Now get you to my Ladies table, & tell her, let her paint an inch thicke, to this favour ſhe must come, make her laugh at that. Hora. What's that my Lord ? Ham. Dooſt thou thinke Alexander lookt a this faſhion i'th earth ? Hora. Een ſo. Ham. And ſmelt ſo pah. Hora. Een ſo my Lord. Ham. To what baſe vſes wee may returne Horatio ? Why may not imagination trace the noble duſt of Alexander, till a find it ſtopping a bunghole ? Hor. Twere to conſider too curiouſly to confider ſo. Ham. No faith, not a iot, but to follow him thether with modeſty enough, and likelyhood to leade it. Alexander dyed, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth to duſt, the duſt is earth , of earth vvee make Lome & why of that Lome whereto he was conuerted, might they not ſtoppe a Beare-barrell ? Imperious Ceſar dead, and turn'd to Clay, Might ſtoppe a hole, to keepe the wind away. O that that earth which kept the world in awe, Should patch a wall t'expell the waters flaw. But ſoft, but ſoft awhile, here comes the King, The Queen, the Courtiers, who is this they follow? And with ſuch maimed rites ? this doth betoken, The corſe they follow, did with deſprat hand Foredoo it owne life, twas of ſome eſtate, Couch we a while and marke.
William Shakespeare
The prince put the dagger on the table. “Sorry.” Yorick bent forward and looked up into his eyes. “Don’t forget our respective places here. I’m your clown. Your plaything. Your toy. Scarcely human. No need to apologise.
A.J. Hartley (Hamlet, Prince of Denmark)
But as her body moves, all the yarn in the room suddenly gains tension. There's a swift swishing sound as the lines pull taut. She feels everything in the room move at once, from the big ropey lines supporting her weight, down to the tiny interlocking stitches pressed against her skin. "She rests in mid-air, suspended above her bed by the network of yarn slicing around the room. It holds her, and at the same time it caresses her. She feels its touch through the stitches on her arms, her legs, her stomach. It feels as if her weight is held in its giant hand, and it contemplates her like Yorick's skull. Hundreds of strings and lines of yarn, ranging from individual strands up to thick knitted cables now move on her. She is wrapped by long meaty loops that move around her legs, and her arms, and her neck; and thin little strings that slip between her fingers. A loop circles her hair and pulls it gently into a pony tail, and it lifts to supports her head. "She hangs quietly and meditatively for a while, feeling the caress of the yarn, gently tightening and loosening, and sliding over her body. It feels along her body. And as it feels her, she feels it. She can feel its affection through the way the yarn touches her. The caresses slide up and down her arms, her legs, between her fingers, and around her neck. "She can feel all the different textures of the different yarns. The scratchy itch of cheap wool, and the smooth toughness of nylon and polyester strings. In places there's even some slick and soft rayon and silk. And she's sure she can tell just by the touch of it, that her foot has been wrapped in a small scarf she made of an extremely fine cashmere. "But the thing doesn't just want to hold her.
A. Andiron (Binding Off: When a passion for knitting becomes passionate knitting)
Stuckie fascinated me and I loved to imagine him as Creon breaking into Antigone’s tomb, his face contorted into a grimace of need and regret. When I recalled, however, that Reba always refused to go anywhere near the macabre thing, I realized that from her perspective, Stuckie was a sort of canine poor Yorick whose smell probably inspired unpleasant ruminations about a dog’s place in the universe.
Hope Jahren (Lab Girl)
There he is!” Ferbus drunkenly shouted as Uncle Mort and Lex returned to the car with the food, sloshing his Yorick all over Driggs. “Captain Sandwich and the Condiment Kid!
Gina Damico (Rogue (Croak, #3))
In the gravedigger scene in act V, Hamlet looks upon an anonymous skull and jokes that even Alexander the Great decomposed into dust that could have been used to plug a beer barrel. But when Hamlet is shown this skull of his old friend Yorick, the prince becomes unspeakably sentimental and sad because he knew him.
Sarah Vowell (Assassination Vacation)
Ich halte deinen Kopf wie Hamlet Yorick's gehalten hat, aber du bist auf deinen Knien, mit einer Knarre im Mund.
Henry Rollins (Solipsist)
Optimists have more fun, milord,” Yorick reminded him. “Yeah, because pessimists have made things safe for ’em.
Christopher Stasheff (King Kobold Revived (Warlock, #2))
The Great Dane by Stewart Stafford Martyr father of poison sleep, Rotten carcass of a slain beast, Wicked stars cast against him, Beloved, that loved him least. O maggot of gnawing doubt, Wriggling along life’s tightrope, Sleepwalking this broken path, To a coup de grâce last stroke. The players unmask dark play, Trampling nightshade that reeks, Honour's duel in a snake pit, The shadow castle grows weak. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.
Stewart Stafford
poor Yorick of infinite jest.
Scott Smith (The Ruins)