Straight from today’s Quotle — here’s who really said it, and the story behind it. Play again

Who really said it

Neither a borrower nor a lender be

Not the Bible — William Shakespeare William Shakespeare 1564–1616 · English playwright & poet
Disputed Free to reuse

The line is spoken by Polonius in Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3, as he sends his son Laertes off to France — not by any biblical writer. It is absent from the 1603 First Quarto, appears in the 1604 Second Quarto as “Neither a borrower nor a lender, boy,” and reaches its familiar form in the 1623 First Folio.

Last verified 27 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be” William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act 1, scene 3 (Polonius to Laertes). Not a Bible verse. First printed in the 1604 Second Quarto; familiar wording from the 1623 First Folio. Verified at quotle.info. · Verbatim: “Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.”

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to the Bible. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

Free to use, including in commercial and paid presentations — no permission or licence needed.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of William Shakespeare — English playwright & poet. Theme: "Neither a borrower nor a lender be". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Neither a borrower nor a lender be". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The passage

Work
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
Passage
Act 1, Scene 3 — Polonius to Laertes
First printed
Second Quarto, 1604 (absent from the 1603 First Quarto)
Familiar wording
First Folio, 1623

Neither a borrower nor a lender be: / For loan oft loses both itself and friend; / And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. / This above all: to thine own self be true; / And it must follow, as the night the day, / Thou canst not then be false to any man. Act 1, Sc. 3

Modern-spelling text. The 1623 First Folio prints it as “Neither a borrower, nor a lender be; / For lone oft loses both it selfe and friend: / And borrowing duls the edge of Husbandry.”

Hamlet, First Folio (1623), Internet Shakespeare Editions

How the text was checked

  • The 1603 First Quarto ↗ gives the farewell precepts to Corambis, and they contain no borrower-and-lender couplet — the speech runs from “Be thou familiar, but by no meanes vulgare” to “This aboue all, to thy owne selfe be true.”
  • The couplet appears in the 1604 Second Quarto ↗, but in a different form: “Neither a borrower nor a lender, boy, / For love oft loses both itself and friend, / And borrowing dulleth edge of husbandry.”
  • The wording that became proverbial is the 1623 First Folio’s ↗: “Neither a borrower, nor a lender be; / For lone oft loses both it selfe and friend.”
  • Wikiquote’s sourced Hamlet page ↗ cites the line at Act I, scene iii, lines 75–76, spoken by Polonius.
Public domain

Hamlet was printed in 1603, 1604 and 1623, all centuries before the 1931 US copyright threshold, and Shakespeare died in 1616. The play’s text is firmly in the public domain worldwide; note that individual modern editions — their notes, glosses and editorial emendations — can carry their own copyright, even though the dialogue itself does not.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

What the record actually shows

The couplet is quoted as though it were proverbial Scripture. It is a line of dramatic dialogue, and even its wording is not quite what most people repeat.

The Bible No such verse

Scripture contains no verse of this wording or this sense. The Bible warns about the position of the debtor — Proverbs 22:7 ↗, “the borrower is servant to the lender” — but it never counsels against lending. Deuteronomy 15:8 ↗ commands the reverse: “thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him, and shalt surely lend him sufficient for his need.”

Shakespeare in his own voice In character

The words are Polonius’s, delivered as parting advice to Laertes in Act 1, Scene 3 — a character the play presents, in one commentator’s phrase, as a pompous buffoon with little self-awareness ↗. Shakespeare wrote the line; he did not necessarily endorse it.

The 1604 Second Quarto Variant text

The version everyone quotes is the First Folio’s. The 1604 Second Quarto ↗ instead reads “Neither a borrower nor a lender, boy, / For love oft loses both itself and friend, / And borrowing dulleth edge of husbandry.”

The 1603 First Quarto Absent

The couplet is missing from the earliest printed Hamlet altogether: in the 1603 First Quarto ↗ the precepts are given by Corambis to Leartes and run from “Be thou familiar, but by no meanes vulgare” straight through to “This aboue all, to thy owne selfe be true” with no borrower-and-lender lines.

Shakespeare wrote it, Polonius says it, and it is in Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3 ↗ — not in the Bible.

Context

Why the mix-up is so durable

The couplet does everything a proverb is supposed to do: it scans, it balances, and it sounds like received wisdom rather than one man’s opinion. Filed alongside “to thine own self be true” — which comes four lines later in the same speech — it acquires the tone of Scripture without any of the substance, and gets quoted in sermons, financial-advice columns and greetings cards as though it had chapter and verse behind it.

It does not. The Bible is wary of debt — Proverbs 22:7 observes that “the borrower is servant to the lender” — but it never tells anyone to stop lending. Deuteronomy 15:8 commands the opposite: “thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him, and shalt surely lend him sufficient for his need.” Polonius’s advice and Scripture’s point in different directions.

Polonius is not a prophet. He is a courtier giving his son a lecture at the door.

The speaker matters

Shakespeare puts the maxim in the mouth of a character the play treats with steady irony. Polonius spies on his own children, hides behind a curtain to eavesdrop, and is stabbed through it. Reading his precepts as the author’s own settled philosophy is a choice, not a given — and it is a choice the couplet’s afterlife as free-floating “wisdom” quietly makes for the reader.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Wisdom Character Friendship

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Hamlet, First Folio (1623) — full textinternetshakespeare.uvic.ca

The Folio text that supplies the familiar wording: “Neither a borrower, nor a lender be; / For lone oft loses both it selfe and friend.”
Hamlet, Second Quarto (1604) — old-spelling transcriptioninternetshakespeare.uvic.ca

The earlier printing, which reads “a lender, boy” and “love oft loses” rather than “be” and “loan.”
Hamlet, First Quarto (1603) — full textinternetshakespeare.uvic.ca

The short 1603 text, where Corambis gives the precepts speech and the borrower-and-lender couplet does not appear at all.
Wikiquote: Hamleten.wikiquote.org

Sourced quotation list placing the line at Act I, scene iii, lines 75–76, spoken by Polonius.
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (eBook #1524)gutenberg.org

Free public-domain modern-spelling text carrying the full Polonius speech through “Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
Proverbs (King James Version)en.wikisource.org

The nearest actual scripture — Proverbs 22:7, “the borrower is servant to the lender” — which says something different from Polonius.

The real author

Who actually wrote it

William Shakespeare

1564–1616 · English playwright & poet

William Shakespeare wrote Hamlet around the turn of the seventeenth century; it survives in three early printings that do not agree with one another — the short First Quarto of 1603, the fuller Second Quarto of 1604, and the First Folio of 1623. The borrower-and-lender couplet belongs to Polonius, the king’s elderly counsellor, and is part of a string of copybook maxims he unloads on his departing son. Shakespeare gives the speech to a character the play repeatedly shows to be a meddler and a windbag, which is why editors have argued for centuries about how straight the advice is meant to be taken.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Cite this page

William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, act 1, sc. 3 (Polonius to Laertes). First printed in the Second Quarto (London, 1604); the familiar wording follows the First Folio (London, 1623).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be’?” Last verified 27 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/neither-a-borrower-nor-a-lender-be/

Something wrong on this page?

Tell us what’s off. A link helps but isn’t required — “this is the wrong person” is a useful report on its own. Nothing here changes the page directly; it goes to our review queue and a human checks it.

Only used to tell you if we act on your report. We never sell or share it.

Copied