To eat, or not to eat; that is the question:
Whether tis nobler in the stomach to suffer
The cherries and meatballs of outrageous taste,
Or to take arms against the idea of diet,
And by opposing, end it? To munch, to gorge;
No more; and by a gorge to say we end
The stomachache and the thousand natural shocks
Our flesh is heir to. 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d! To munch, to gorge;
To gorge: perchance to feast: ay, there’s the rub;
For in the feast of death what feast may come
When we have filled our stomachs to the fullest,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the sprouts and beats of choice,
The worst chef’s meal, the proud man’s big fat belly,
The pangs of overeating, the mind’s delay,
The thought of not eating and the spurns
That patient merit of th’ unworthy meals.
When he himself might his quietus make
With a dire diet? Who would bear all this,
To drool and starve under a weary life,
But that the dread of nothing after food,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No feaster returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those meals we have
Than haste to others that may be unliked?
Thus trying new food does make cowards of us all;
And thus the natural way we like to choose
Is fogged with the limitless choice of food,
And great determinedness of power and will
With this regard ambivalent choices made
And lose the name of action.