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  ...the wasting heartbreak and gentle lunacy of the daughter, while the son shows it in a rashness of impulse and act, a kind of crankiness, of whose essential feebleness we are all the more sensible as contrasted with a nature so steady on its keel, and drawing so much water, as that of Horatio,--the foil at once, in different ways, to both him and Hamlet. It was natural, also, that the daughter of self-conceited old Polonius should have her softness stiffened with a fibre of obstinacy; for There are two kinds of weakness, that which breaks and that which bends.   Ophelia's is of the former kind; Hero is her counterpart, giving way before calamity, and rising again so soon as the pressure is removed.
I find two passages in Dante that contain the exactest possible definition of that habit or quality of Hamlet's mind which justifies the tragic turn of the play, and renders it natural and unavoidable from the beginning. The first is from the second canto of the _Inferno_:--
"E quale e quei che disvuol cio che volle, E per nuovi pensier...   Lowell, James Russell

Excerpt from Among My Books First Series · This quote is tagged Weakness · Search on Google Books to find all references and sources for this quotation.

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