Daily Inspiration Quote by William Shakespeare

Mercy gets its sharpest defense by starting from the most unflattering premise: if we truly received what we “deserve,” almost nobody would walk away unpunished. Shakespeare drops the line in Hamlet (Act 2), as Hamlet needles Polonius about how to treat the visiting actors. Polonius, anxious to appear respectable, promises to treat them “according to their desert.” Hamlet’s retort is a moral trap disguised as a joke. “Use every man after his desert” sounds like sober justice; “who should scape whipping?” yanks the idea into the body, into consequence, into the ugly fact that strict desert quickly turns into a culture of lashes.

The intent is double-edged. Hamlet is genuinely advocating generosity toward the players, but he’s also staging a miniature critique of the court’s self-satisfaction. Polonius is a bureaucrat of manners, the kind of man who believes etiquette equals virtue. Hamlet punctures that smug calculus: once you start measuring people by merit, you’re forced to admit your own liabilities. The subtext is confession-by-proxy: Hamlet’s Denmark is full of people demanding standards for others while quietly praying no one applies the same standards to them.

It works because it weaponizes common-sense fairness against itself. Shakespeare understands that “desert” is often just vengeance wearing a robe, and that a society obsessed with ranking worth will always find someone to whip. Hamlet’s punchline smuggles in a radical alternative: treat people better than they’ve earned, not because they’re saints, but because you’re not.