What Is This Quintessence Of Dust?

I have of late — but wherefore I know not — lost all my mirth, forgone
all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition
that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this
most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament,
this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other
thing to me than a foul and pestilential congregation of vapours.

What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in
form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in
apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!

And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me: no,
nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.

William Shakespeare

Hamlet

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