That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
pith and moment : force and importance. 
 The First Folio version of the text has “pith”; the Second Quarto has “pitch.” The latter word “may allude to ‘ pitching  or throwing the bar,–a manly exercise, usual in country villages’…or to ‘the height to which a falcon or other bird of prey soars before [swooping] on its prey’”  (Jesús Tronch,  A Synoptic Hamlet , 2002) .
To Be or Not To Be