Perhaps the most famous image in drama is Hamlet contemplating Yorick's skull (another contender would be the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet), at which point he closes his conversation with the jester's memory by saying: "Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come. Make her laugh at that." The concision and directness of the final sentence is truly remarkable, and certainly part of the reason for the scene's renown. There is a scene that is of a similar nature in King Lear, where Lear, in the storm, confronted by Edgar in his disguise as the madman, Poor Tom, says the following:

Why, thou wert better in thy grave than to answer with thy

uncover'd body this extremity of the skies. Is man no more than

this? Consider him well. Thou ow'st the worm no silk, the beast

no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha! Here's three

on's are sophisticated! Thou art the thing itself; unaccommodated

man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art.

Off, off, you lendings! Come, unbutton here.

The entire passage is of great interest, but the line that I'm thinking of in this context is: "Thou art the thing itself", which rivals the above example from Hamlet in terms of briefness and power. In another sense though, the protagonists are looking in quite different directions. Hamlet's epiphany (like several of his others) concerns the all-conquering power of death, whereas Lear's is a realization about human life, and how much of it he has missed.