Macbeth Quotes

Malcolm

false, deceitful, Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin That has a name. But there's no bottom, none, In my voluptuousness. Your wives, your daughters, Your matrons, and your maids could not fill up The cistern of my lust, and my desire All continent impediments would o'erbear That did oppose my will. Better Macbeth Than such an one to reign.

Lady Macbeth

'Tis safer to be that which we destroy Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy

Lady Macbeth

'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?

Lady Macbeth

A limbeck only. When in swinish sleep Their drenchèd natures lies as in a death, What cannot you and I perform upon Th' unguarded Duncan?

Lady Macbeth

A little water clears us of this deed.

Macbeth

False face must hide what the false heart doth know.

Hecate

And you all know, security Is mortals' chiefest enemy.

Macbeth

Ay, in the catalogue you go for men, As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs, Shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves are clept All by the name of dogs.

Macbeth

Bring them before us. To be thus is nothing, But to be safely thus. Our fears in Banquo Stick deep, and in his royalty of nature Reigns that which would be feared. 'Tis much he dares, And to that dauntless temper of his mind He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valor To act in safety. There is none but he Whose being I do fear; and under him My genius is rebuked, as it is said Mark Antony's was by Caesar. He chid the sisters When first they put the name of king upon me And bade them speak to him. Then, prophet-like, They hailed him father to a line of kings. Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown And put a barren scepter in my grip, Thence to be wrenched with an unlineal hand, No son of mine succeeding. 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, and mine eternal jewel Given to the common enemy of man To make them kings, the seeds of Banquo kings. Rather than so, come fate into the list, And champion me to th' utterance.—Who's there?

Banquo

Good sir, why do you start and seem to fear Things that do sound so fair?—I' th' name of truth, Are you fantastical, or that indeed Which outwardly you show? My noble partner You greet with present grace and great prediction Of noble having and of royal hope, That he seems rapt withal. To me you speak not. 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 favors nor your hate.

Lady Macduff

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.

Macbeth

If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well It were done quickly. If th' assassination Could trammel up the consequence and catch With his surcease success, that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all here,

Macbeth

In restless ecstasy. 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.

Lady Macbeth

Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead Are but as pictures. 'Tis the eye of childhood That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed, I'll gild the faces of the grooms withal, For it must seem their guilt.

Macbeth

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-oppressèd brain?

Macbeth

Prithee, peace. I dare do all that may become a man. Who dares do more is none.

Second WItch

Something wicked this way comes

Macbeth

Thanks for that. There the grown serpent lies. The worm that's fled Hath nature that in time will venom breed, No teeth for th' present. Get thee gone. Tomorrow We'll hear ourselves again.

Macbeth

That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself And falls on th' other—

Macbeth

The Prince of Cumberland! That is a step On which I must fall down or else o'erleap, For in my way it lies. 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.

Donalbain

There's daggers in men's smiles. The near in blood, The nearer bloody.

Lady Macbeth

These deeds must not be thought After these ways; so, it will make us mad.

Banquo

Thou hast it now—king, Cawdor, Glamis, all As the Weïrd Women promised, and I fear Thou played'st most foully for 't. Yet it was said It should not stand in thy posterity, But that myself should be the root and father Of many kings. If there come truth from them (As upon thee, Macbeth, their speeches shine) Why, by the verities on thee made good, May they not be my oracles as well, And set me up in hope? But hush, no more

Macbeth

To our own lips. He's here in double trust: First, as I am his kinsman and his subject, Strong both against the deed; then, as his host, Who should against his murderer shut the door,

Macbeth

Two truths are told As happy prologues to the swelling act Of the imperial theme.—I thank you, gentlemen. Aside. This supernatural soliciting Cannot be ill, cannot be good. If ill, Why hath it given me earnest of success Commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor. If good, why do I yield to that suggestion Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair And make my seated heart knock at my ribs Against the use of nature? Present fears Are less than horrible imaginings. My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, Shakes so my single state of man That function is smothered in surmise, And nothing is but what is not.

Lady Macbeth

Under my battlements. 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.

Macbeth

We still have judgment here, that we but teach Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return To plague th' inventor.

Lady Macbeth

What beast was 't, then, That made you break this enterprise to me? When you durst do it, then you were a man; And to be more than what you were, you would Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place Did then adhere, and yet you would make both. They have made themselves, and that their fitness now Does unmake you. 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 plucked my nipple from his boneless gums And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you Have done to this.

Lady Macbeth

What thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o' th' milk of human kindness To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great, Art not without ambition, but without The illness should attend it. What thou wouldst highly, That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false And yet wouldst wrongly win.

Macbeth

Whence is that knocking? How is 't with me when every noise appalls me? What hands are here! Ha, they pluck out mine eyes. 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.

Macbeth

Who can be wise, amazed, temp'rate, and furious, Loyal, and neutral, in a moment? No man. Th' expedition of my violent love Outrun the pauser, reason. Here lay Duncan, His silver skin laced with his golden blood, And his gashed stabs looked like a breach in nature For ruin's wasteful entrance; there the murderers, Steeped in the colors of their trade, their daggers Unmannerly breeched with gore. Who could refrain That had a heart to love, and in that heart Courage to make 's love known?

Lady Macbeth

Your face, my thane, is as a book where men May read strange matters. To beguile the time, Look like the time. Bear welcome in your eye, Your hand, your tongue. Look like th' innocent flower, But be the serpent under 't.