Macbeth

Famous quotes

• Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
  Hover through the fog and filthy air.

  Act I, Scene I, spoken by AllIn context

  • Good & Evil

• If you can look into the seeds of time,
  And say which grain will grow, and which will not,
  Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear
  Your favours nor your hate.

  Act I, Scene III, spoken by BanquoIn context

  • Time

• And oftentimes to win us to our harm,
  The instruments of darkness tell us truths;
  Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s
  In deepest consequence.

  Act I, Scene III, spoken by BanquoIn context

  • Good & Evil
  • Truth & Lies

• Come what come may,
  Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.

  Act I, scene iii.In context

  • Time

• There’s no art
  To find the mind’s construction in the face:
  He was a gentleman on whom I built
  An absolute trust.

  Act I, Scene IV, spoken by DuncanIn context

  • Character

• Stars, hide your fires!
  Let not light see my black and deep desires.

  Act I, Scene IV, spoken by MacbethIn context

  • Good & Evil

• Come, you spirits
  That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
  And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full
  Of direst cruelty!

  Act I, Scene V, spoken by Lady MacbethIn context

  • Good & Evil

• Look like the innocent flower,
  But be the serpent under’t.

  Act I, Scene V, spoken by Lady MacbethIn context

  • Truth & Lies

• If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well
  It were done quickly.

  Act I, Scene VII, spoken by MacbethIn context

  • Decisions

• I have no spur
  To prick the sides of my intent, but only
  Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself
  And falls on th’ other

  Act I, Scene VII, spoken by MacbethIn context

  • Motivation & Goals
  • Power

• I dare do all that may become a man;
  Who dares do more is none.

  Act I, Scene VII, spoken by MacbethIn context

  • Courage
  • Men

• Away, and mock the time with fairest show:
  False face must hide what the false heart doth know.

  Act I, Scene VII, spoken by MacbethIn context

  • Truth & Lies

• Is this a dagger which I see before me,
  The handle toward my hand?

  Act II, scene i.In context

• Methought I heard a voice cry, “Sleep no more!
  Macbeth does murder sleep,”⁠—the innocent sleep;
  Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care,
  The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,
  Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
  Chief nourisher in life’s feast.

  Act II, Scene II, spoken by MacbethIn context

  • Sleep

• Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
  Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
  The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
  Making the green one red.

  Act II, Scene II, spoken by MacbethIn context

  • Good & Evil

• Had I but died an hour before this chance,
  I had liv’d a blessed time; for, from this instant
  There’s nothing serious in mortality.
  All is but toys: renown and grace is dead;
  The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
  Is left this vault to brag of.

  Act II, Scene III, spoken by MacbethIn context

  • Life & Death

• There’s daggers in men’s smiles

  Act II, Scene III, spoken by DonalbainIn context

  • Truth & Lies

• We have scorch’d the snake, not kill’d it.

  Act III, Scene II, spoken by MacbethIn context

  • Enemies

• Duncan is in his grave;
  After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well;
  Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison,
  Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing
  Can touch him further.

  Act III, Scene II, spoken by MacbethIn context

  • Life & Death

• Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.

  Act III, Scene II, spoken by MacbethIn context

  • Good & Evil

• Now, good digestion wait on appetite,
  And health on both!

  Act III, Scene IV, spoken by MacbethIn context

  • Food
  • Health

• Stand not upon the order of your going,
  But go at once.

  Act III, Scene IV, spoken by Lady MacbethIn context

• It will have blood, they say, blood will have blood.

  Act III, Scene IV, spoken by MacbethIn context

  • Good & Evil
  • Justice

• I am in blood
  Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more,
  Returning were as tedious as go o’er.

  Act III, Scene IV, spoken by MacbethIn context

  • Good & Evil

• Double, double toil and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble.

  Witches, Scene IIn context

  • Halloween

• Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog, Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting, Lizard’s leg, and owlet’s wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

  In: Medical Arena, Volumes 7-8, 1898, p. 122In context

  • Halloween

• By the pricking of my thumbs,
  Something wicked this way comes.

  Act IV, Scene I, spoken by Second WitchIn context

  • Good & Evil

• When our actions do not,
  Our fears do make us traitors.

  Act IV, Scene II, spoken by Lady MacduffIn context

  • Fear

• Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak
  Whispers the o’er-fraught heart, and bids it break.

  Act IV, Scene III, spoken by MalcolmIn context

  • Emotion

• Out, damned spot! out, I say! One; two. Why, then ’tis time to do’t. Hell is murky! Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?

  Act V, Scene I, spoken by Lady MacbethIn context

  • Good & Evil

• All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.

  Act V, scene i.In context

• What’s done cannot be undone.

  Act V, Scene I, spoken by Lady MacbethIn context

• Now does he feel his title
  Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe
  Upon a dwarfish thief.

  Act V, Scene II, spoken by AngusIn context

  • Leadership
  • Power

• I have liv’d long enough: my way of life
  Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf;
  And that which should accompany old age,
  As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
  I must not look to have

  Act V, Scene III, spoken by MacbethIn context

  • Age

• Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas’d,
  Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
  Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
  And with some sweet oblivious antidote
  Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff
  Which weighs upon the heart?

  Act V, Scene III, spoken by MacbethIn context

  • Emotion
  • Health

• Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
  Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
  To the last syllable of recorded time;
  And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
  The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
  Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player,
  That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
  And then is heard no more. It is a tale
  Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
  Signifying nothing.

  Act V, Scene V, spoken by MacbethIn context

  • Life & Death
  • Time

• Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
  That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
  And then is heard no more. It is a tale
  Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
  Signifying nothing.

  Act V, scene vIn context

  • Life & Death

Contents