| “Fair is foul, and foul is fair” | The witches (their philosophy of life) |
| “He unseam’d him from the nave to the chops” | The Sergeant (in his description of Macbeth’s killing of the rebel Macdonwald.) |
| “What, can the devil speak true?” | Banquo (in reaction to Macbeth being named Thane of Cawdor, as the witches predicted.) |
| “Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.” | Malcolm (when he comments on the execution of the Thane of Cawdor, whose title was then given to Macbeth.) |
| “Let not light see my black and deep desires.” | Macbeth (after being honored by Duncan, he wrestles with his desire to murder him.) |
| “Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way.” | Lady Macbeth (after receiving her husband’s letter about the witches’ prophecy, she fears that he isn’t bad enough.) |
| “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!” | Lady Macbeth (upon hearing that King Duncan is to stay the night in her castle, she pumps herself up to kill him.) |
| “I have given suck, and know how tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it was smiling in my face, have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums, and dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you have done to this.” | Lady Macbeth (heaps scorn on Macbeth’s declaration that they will “proceed no further” with the plan to murder King Duncan.) |
| “But screw your courage to the sticking-place, and we’ll not fail.” | Lady Macbeth (she challenges Macbeth to commit to the plan to murder King Duncan.) |
| “Bring forth men-children only; for thy undaunted mettle should compose nothing but males.” | Macbeth (after Lady Macbeth has talked him into committing to the plan to murder Duncan, Macbeth praises her manly spirit.) |
| “Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?” | Macbeth (on his way to murder Duncan, Macbeth sees the vision of the bloody dagger leading the way.) |
| “Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done’t.” | Lady Macbeth (worried that Macbeth will fail to murder Duncan, she reveals a weakness while boasting of her strength.) |
| “Thou hast it now: King, Cawdor, Glamis, all, as the weird women promised, and I fear thou play’dst most foully for’t.” | Banquo (alone, he reflects on Macbeth’s rise to the throne.) |
| “I am in blood stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er.” | Macbath (he reflects that there is no turning back from his evil course.) |
| “None of woman born shall harm Macbeth.” | The second apparition, a “Bloody Child.” |
| “Macbeth shall never vanquish’d be until Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill shall come against him.” | The third apparition, “a Child crowned, with a tree in his hand.” |
| “All my pretty ones? Did you say all? O hell-kite! All? What, all my pretty chickens and their dam at one fell swoop?” | Macduff (he is astonished in grief at the news that Macbeth has slaughtered his family.) |
| “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 wefear 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?” | Lady Macbeth (In the first speech of her sleepwalking scene, memories of the night of the murder tumble out and she begins to lose her mind.) |
| “I have liv’d long enough: my way of life is fall’n into the sear, the yellow leaf; and that which should accompany old age, as honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have; but, in their stead, curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath, which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.” | Macbeth (upon hearing of the approach of ten thousand troops to besiege his castle, he voices a mixture of despair and stoicism.) |
| “She should have died hereafter; there would have been a time for such a word. 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.” | Macbeth (responding to the news of his wife’s death, he voices a defiant despair.) |
| “Macduff was from his mother’s womb untimely ripp’d.” | Macduff (he tells Macbeth that he is the man not “of woman born.”) |
| “Yet I will try the last. Before my body I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff, and damn’d be him that first cries, “Hold, enough!” | Macbeth (his final words before he is killed.) |
Macbeth Quotes
September 3, 2019