| To beguile the time, look like the time, hear welcome in your eye, your hand, your tongue; look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t. | Lady Macbeth, after she receives Macbeth’s letter, and he reaches the palace, she advises him. |
| Knock, knock; never at quiet! What are you? But this Place is too cold for Hell. | Porter, After death of duncan, Lennox and Macduff come to awake the King. |
| So well thy words become thee as thy wounds; They smack of honor both. Go get him surgeons. | King Duncan, Captain comes to regale the war. |
| Paddock calls. Anon. Fair is found, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air. | Three witches, opening of the act. |
| So I lose none in seeking to augment it, but still keep my bosom franchised and allegiance clear, I shall be counseled. | Banquo, After he dreams of the three witches, he converses with macbeth. |
| … Where we are, There’s daggers in men’s smiles. The near in blood, the nearer bloodier. | Donalbain, after Duncan is slain, discusses fate of the brothers. |
| Was the hope drunk Wherein you dressed yourself? Hath it slept since? And wakes it now, to look so green and pale At what it did so freely? From this time such I account thy love. | Lady Macbeth, after feast, Macbeth doesn’t want to continue on with the plan. feels guilty. She encourages him |
| This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself Unto our gentle senses. | Duncan, he just arrived at the Macbeth resident |
| O, never Shall sun that morrow see! | Lady Macbeth, Macbeth tells Lady that the king will come and contends Duncan shall never leave and that we must kill him |
| Stars, hide your fires, Let not light see my black and deep desires; The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be, Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see. | Macbeth, pre-duncan slaughter. Duncan just announced Malcolm as next in line, as an aside, Macbeth knows what he must do next |
| I am settled and bend up Each corporal agent to this terrible feat. Away and mock the time with fairest show; False face must hide what the false heart doth know. | Macbeth, comes to his resolve as to what he must do. “Go now, and pretend to be a friendly hostess. Hide with a false pleasant face what you know in your false, evil heart.” |
| I have no words; My voice is in my sword, thou bloodier villain that terms can give thee out | Macduff, “My sword will talk for me. You are too evil for words!” He finds Macbeth and fights him |
| 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! Make thick my blood; | Lady Macbeth, Duncan is coming, she calls to the spirits to become more man like to further her and macbeth’s ambitions |
| The Prince of Cumberland! That is a step on which I must fall down, or else o’erleap, for in my way it lies. | Macbeth, Duncan has just named Malcolm as prince of cumberland, in an aside he speaks of whether or not he should usurp |
| Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be What thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way. | Lady Macbeth, finished reading Macbeth’s letter, contends he does not have what it takes |
| For brave macbeth, well he deserves that name, disdaining fortune, with brandished steel, which smoked with bloody execution like valor’s minion carved out his passage till he faced the slave’ which ne’er shook hands, nor bad farewell to him, till he unseamed him from the nave to the chaps, and fixed his head upon our battlements | Captain, recounting war tale of Macbeth’s bravery and success. |
| O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife! | Macbeth, just learned that Banquo died but Fleance flee’d. (3.2) |
| … Come thick night, and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell that my keen knife see not the wound it makes, nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, to cry, hold hold! | Lady Macbeth, plots to kill duncan. hopes she will not be consumed by guilt (1.5) |
| Were such things here as we do speak about? Or have we eaten on the insane root That takes the reason prisoner? | Banquo, witches just told the two of the prophesies (1.3) |
| … I have no spur to prick the side of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which overleaps itself and falls on the other. | Macbeth, contemplates whether he should kill duncan, since ambition is the only thing fueling him (1.7) |
| …Macbeth is ripe for the shaking, and the powers above put on their instruments. | Macduff, claims he will set forth revenge on Macbeth. Just finished test with malcolm, ross lets him know his kids and wife is dead (4.3) |
| 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. | Macbeth, lady and macbeth decide that there is more fish to fry than just duncan (3.2) |
| Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time | Macbeth, after lady macbeth is dead, he is numb (5.5) |
| It is myself I mean; in whom I know all the particulars of vice so grafted that, when they shall be opened, black macbeth will seem as pure as snow ,and the poor state esteem him as a lamb, being compared with my confineless harms | Malcolm, tells Macduff of his vices to test him (3.3) |
| Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand? Come let me clutch thee. I have not, and yet I see thee still | Macbeth, right before he is about to kill duncan he sees an imaginary dagger in front of him |
| My hands are of your color; but I shame to wear a heart so white. | Lady Macbeth, Macbeth forgot to leave the bloody daggers, lady decides to do the deed (2.2) |
| Be bloody, bold and resolute; laugh to scorn the power of man, for none of woman born shall harm macbeth. | Second Apparition (4.1) |
| ‘Tis unnatural, even like the deed that’s done. On tuesday last, a falcon, towering in her pride of place, was by a mousing own hawked at and killed | Old man, owl killed a falcon (2.4) |
| If’t be so For Banquo’s issue have I filed my mind; for them the gracious Duncan have I murdered put rancors in the vessel of my peace only for them | Macbeth, just becomes king, muses on the subject of Banquo, reflecting that his old friend is the only man in Scotland whom he fears (3.1) |
| … But tis strange And oftentimes to win us to our harm the instruments of darkness tell us truths win us with harmless trifles to betray us in deepest consequence | Banquo, after witches foretold prophecies |
| There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face. He was a gentleman on whom I built an absolute trust. | Duncan, on the betrayal of thane of cawdor |
| Methought I heard a voice cry, “Sleep no more!” Macbeth does murder sleep, the innocent sleep, Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care, the death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second curse, chief nourisher in life’s feast | Macbeth, obsessive with guilt just after killing Duncan. (2.2) |
| I have lived long enough. My way of life is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf; and that which should accompany old age, as honor, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have; but in their stead, curses, not loud but deep, mouth honor, breath. Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not. | Macbeth, army is advancing. (5.3) |
| If good, why do I yield to that suggestion Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair and make my sealed heart knock at my ribs agains the use of nature? | Macbeth, Upon hearing he will be thane of cawdor, after witches spoke. (1.3) |
| I pull in resolution, and begin To doubt the equivocation of the fiend That lies like truth… | Macbeth, messenger lets macbeth know of the wood moving (5.5) |
| Knock, knock, knock! Who’s there i’th name of Beelzebub? | Porter, Lennox and Macduff are knocking |
| That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold; What hath quenched them hath given me fire. | Lady Macbeth, after drunkening the servants, referring to alcohol (2.2) |
| It will have blood; they say, blood will have blood. Stones have been known to move and trees to speak; | Macbeth, after commencement dinner, “the dead will have their revenge” (3.4) |
| I shall do so; but I must feel it as a man | Macduff, just learned kids died, Malcolm tells him to take it like a man (4.3) |
| The Thane of FIfe had a wife, where is she now? What, will these hands ne’er be clean? | Lady Macbeth, sleepwalking, thane of fife is macduff |
| Whither should I fly? I have done no harm, But I remember now I am in this earthly world; where to do harm is often laudable, to do good sometime accounted dangerous folly. Why then alas, Do i put up that womanly defense to say that I have done no harm? | Lady Macduff, messenger tells her to flee. |
| If you can look into the seeds of time, And say which will grow and which will not, speak then to me, who neither begs nor fears, your favors nor your hate. | Banquo, witches finished speaking to macbeth, banquo wants to know his fortellment |
| … Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done ‘t. | Lady Macbeth, after she planted the daggers on the servants |
| … Here lay Duncan, His silver skin laced with golden blood, And his gashed stabs looked like a breach in nature For ruin’s wasteful entrance | Macbeth, explains why he killed the servants, he loved duncan and that sent him in a blind rage supposedly, cover story. (2.3) |
| What should be spoken here, where our fate, Hid in an auger hole, may rush and seize us? Our tears are not yet brewed. | Donalbain, says to malcolm they are not safe |
Macbeth Quotes
August 16, 2019