This quote is from a famous speech by Hamlet in Act II, scene II.
Rosencrantz and Guilderstern arrive and after some prompting by Hamlet, they reveal that they have been sent to speak with him. Hamlet confides in them that he has "lost all my mirth" and "the earth seems to me a sterile promontory." Clearly Hamlet is in a state of depression/melancholia:
What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reson, how infinite in faculties, 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, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.
His expression of man as "noble" and "infinite in faculties" seems rather ironic in view of his reaction to Claudius and Polonius--whom he perceives as anything but godlike and paragons--and his two unfaithful friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
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