What a piece of work is a man lines written by Montaigne: However, rather than being a direct influence on Shakespeare, Montaigne may have merely been reacting to the same general atmosphere of the time, making the source of these lines one of context rather than direct influence. What a piece of work is a man "What a piece of work is man!" is a phrase within a soliloquy by Prince Hamlet in William Shakespeare's play of the same name. Hamlet is reflecting, at first admiringly, and then despairingly, on the human condition. The soliloquy, spoken in the play by Prince Hamlet to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Act
A land without a people for a people without a land Anita Shapira wrote that "The slogan 'A land without a people for a people without a land' was common among Zionists at the end of the nineteenth, and the beginning of the twentieth century." A variation apparently first used by a Christian clergyman and Christian Restorationist, Rev. Alexander Keith, D.D., appeared in 1843, when he wrote that the Jews are "a people without a country; even as their own land, as subsequently to be shown, is in a great measure a country without a people". In its most common wording, "A land without a people and a people without a