Quotes from Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Fair is foul, and foul is fair.

Macbeth

--Witches, Act I, scene i

Fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling,

Showed like a rebel's whore.

--Captain, Act I, scene ii

If you can look into the seeds of time,

And say which grain will grow, and which will not,

Speak.

--Banquo, Act I, scene iii

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.

--Banquo, Act I, scene iii

If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me.

--Macbeth, Act I, scene iii

There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face.

--Duncan, Act I, scene iv

Nothing in his life

Became him like the leaving it; he died

As one that had been studied in his death,

To throw away the dearest thing he ow'd,

As 'twere a careless trifle.

--Malcolm, Act I, scene iv

Stars, hide your fires!

Let not light see my black and deep desires.

--Macbeth, Act I, scene iv

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: thou wouldst be great;

Art not without ambition; but without

The illness should attend it.

--Lady Macbeth, Act I, scene v

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,

Stop up the access and passage to remorse,

That no compunctious visitings of nature

Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between

The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,

And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,

Wherever in your sightless substances

You wait on nature's mischief!

--Lady Macbeth, Act I, scene v

Look like the innocent flower,

But be the serpent under it.

--Lady Macbeth, Act I, scene v

I have no spur

To prick the sides of my intent, but only

Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself

And falls on the other.

--Macbeth, Act I, scene vii

I dare do all that may become a man;

Who dares do more, is none.

--Macbeth, Act I, scene vii

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, Act I, scene vii

Screw your courage to the sticking-place.

--Lady Macbeth, Act I, scene vii

Is this a dagger which I see before me,

The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee;

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible

To feeling as to sight? or art thou but

A dagger of the mind, a false creation,

Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?

I see thee yet, in form as palpable

As this which now I draw.

--Macbeth, Act II, scene i

The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees

Is left this vault to brag of.

--Macbeth, Act II, scene i

To show an unfelt sorrow is an office

Which the false man does easy.

--Malcolm, Act II, scene ii

Nought's had, all's spent

Where our desire is got without content.

'Tis safer to be that which we destroy

Than, by destruction, dwell in doubtful joy.

--Lady Macbeth, Act III, scene ii

There 's daggers in men's smiles.

--Donalbain, Act II, scene iii

What's done is done.

--Lady Macbeth, Act III, scene ii

I am in blood

Stepp'd in so far, that, should I wade no more,

Returning were as tedious as go o'er.

--Macbeth, Act III, scene iv

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

--Witches, Act IV, scene i

By the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes.

--Second Witch, Act IV, scene i

When our actions do not,

Our fears do make us traitors.

--Lady Macduff, Act IV, scene ii

Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell;

Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace,

Yet grace must still look so.

--Malcolm, Act IV, scene iii

Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak

Whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break.

--Malcolm, Act IV, scene iii

Out, damned spot! out, I say!

--Lady Macbeth, Act V, scene i

Those he commands move only in command,

Nothing in love: now does he feel his title

Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe

Upon a dwarfish thief.

--Angus, Act V, scene ii

I have almost forgot the taste of fears;

The time has been, my senses would have cool'd

To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair

Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir

As life were in't: I have supp'd full with horrors;

Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts

Cannot once start me.

--Macbeth, Act V, scene v

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, Act V, scene v

 Notable Quotes

Good things of day begin to droop and drowse;

While night's black agents to their preys do rouse.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Macbeth

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.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Macbeth

Let every man be master of his time.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Macbeth

Nought's had, all's spent,

Where our desire is got without content.

SHAKESPEARE, Macbeth