Macbeth Quotations

Act 1
1.1.3-4 “When the hurly-burly’s done, / when the battle’s lost and won”
1.1.9 “fair is foul, and foul is fair”
1.3.58-60 “if you can look into the seeds of time, / and say which seeds will grow and which
will not, / speak to me then” – Banquo to witches
1.3.67 “thou shalt get kings, though thou be none” – witches to Banquo
1.3.107 “What, can the devil speak true” – Banquo about witches
1.3.108-109 “why do you dress me / in borrow’d robes” – Macbeth to Angus
1.3.125-127 “oftentimes, to win us to our harm, / the instruments of darkness tell us
truths, / win us with honest trifles” – Banquo to Macbeth
1.3.131-132 “this supernatural soliciting / cannot be ill: cannot be good” – Macbeth about
witches’ prophecies
1.3.136-137 “whose horrid image doth unfix my hair / and make my seated heart knock at
my ribs, / against the use of nature?”
1.4.50-51 “stars, hide your fires; / let not light see my black and deep desires” – Macbeth
1.4.52-53 “the eye wink at the hand; yet let that be, / which the eye fears, when it is done,
to see,” – Macbeth about killing the king
1.5.16-17 “I fear thy nature / it is too full o’ the milk of human kindness” – L.Macbeth
1.5.19-20 “not without ambition, but without / the illness should attend it” – L.Macbeth
1.5.25-26 “hie thee hither, / that I may pour my spirits in thine ear;” – L.Macbeth
1.5.40-43 “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!” – L.Macbeth
1.5.43-44 “make thick my blood; / stop up the access and passage to remorse” – L.Macbeth
1.5.47-48 “come to my woman’s breasts, / and take my milk for gall, you murdering
ministers”
1.5.50-54 “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!’” – L.Macbeth about killing the king
1.7.1-2 “if it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well / it were done quickly”
1.7.8-9 “we but teach / bloody instructions, which, being taught, return / to plague th’
inventor” – Macbeth
1.7.16-20 “this Duncan / Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been / so clear in his great
office, that his virtues / will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against / the deep
damnation of his taking-off” – Macbeth
1.7.25-27 “I have no spur / to prick the sides of my intent, but only / vaulting ambition” –
Macbeth has no murderous intent but wants to be king
1.7.30-31 “we will proceed no further in this business: / he hath honoured me of late” –
Macbeth
1.7.45-46 “I dare do all that become a man; / who dares do more is none” – Macbeth will
only do noble deeds
1.7.49-51 “ 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” - L.Macbeth
1.7.54-58 “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 its boneless gums, /
and dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you” – L.Macbeth would kill the king if she
vowed to do so like Macbeth had done
1.7.73-75 “bring forth men children only; / for thy undaunted mettle should compose ,
nothing but males” – Macbeth to L.Macbeth about her manliness

Act 2
2.1.33-34 “Is this a dagger which I see before me, / the handle toward my hand?” – Macbeth
2.1.37-39 “art thou / a dagger of the mind, a false creation, / proceeding from the heat-
oppressed brain?” – Macbeth’ murderous intents causing him to hallucinate
2.1.60-61 “whiles I threat, he lives: / words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives” –
Macbeth talking about killing the king makes him want to do it more
2.1.63-64 “hear it not, Duncan: for it is a knell / that summons thee to heaven or to hell” –
Macbeth doesn’t want Duncan to hear L.Macbeth’s signal
2.2.14-15 “ Macbeth: I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise? Lady Macbeth: I
heard the owl scream and the crickets cry.” – Macbeth and L.Macbeth talk about how
nature has already been disrupted as the king has been killed
2.2.58-59 “will all great Neptune’s Ocean wash this blood / clean from my hand? No,” –
Macbeth immediately feels guilty
2.2.65 “a little water clears us of this deed.” – L.Macbeth does not feel guilty or remorseful
2.3 “most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope / the Lord’s anointed temple, and stole
thence / the life o’ the building!” - Macduff
2.3 “here lay Duncan, / his silver skin laced with his golden blood; / and his gash’d stabs
look’d like a breach in nature” – Macbeth
2.4 “by the clock, ‘tis day’ / and yet the dark night strangles the travelling lamp” – old man
2.4 Old man – “Duncan’s horses…/ turn’d wild in nature” Ross – “’Tis said they did eat each
other”

Act 3
3.1 “to be thus is nothing; / but to be safely thus” – Macbeth
3.1 “upon my head they placed a fruitless crown, / and put a barren sceptre in my gripe” –
Macbeth saying that his children will not be king, and he has no divinely appointed power
3.2 “for Banquo’s issue have I filed my mind; / for them the gracious Duncan have I
murder’d; … / and mine eternal jewel / given to the common enemy of man” – Macbeth
3.2 “O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife” – Macbeth
3.4 “never shake / thy gory locks at me.” – Macbeth about the ghost of Banquo
3.4 “Avaunt! And quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee! / Thy bones are marrowless, thy
blood is cold;” – Macbeth to ghost of Banquo
3.4 “it will have blood; they say, blood will have blood” – The more he kills people the more
guilty he will feel
3.4 “I am in blood / stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, / returning were as
tedious as go o’er” – Macbeth saying how he has killed so many people and feels so much
guilt that he has crossed the point of no return
3.5 “the tyrant’s feast” – Lennox about Macbeth, first time Macbeth is called a tyrant in the
play
3.5 “our suffering country / under a hand accursed!”

Act 4
4.1 “by the pricking of my thumbs, / something wicked this way comes.” – witches calling
Macbeth evil
4.1 “be bloody, bold, and resolute … for none of woman born / shall harm Macbeth.” –
apparition 2
4.1 “Macbeth shall never vanquish’d be until / Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill /
shall come against him” – apparition 3 to Macbeth
4.1 “infected be the air whereon they ride; / and damn’d all those that trust them”-Macbeth
4.1 “from this moment / the very firstlings of my heart shall be / the firstlings of my hand” –
Macbeth saying he will act without thought from now on
4.2 “But cruel are the times, when we are traitors / and do not know ourselves” – Ross to
L.Macduff, inverted values
4.2 “I am in this earthly world; where to do harm / is often laudable, to good sometimes /
accounted dangerous folly” – L.Macduff, inverted values
4.3 “each new morn / new widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows / strike heaven on
the face” – Macduff about Scotland under the rule of Macbeth
4.3 “our country sinks beneath the yoke; / it weeps, it bleeds; and each new day a gash / is
added to her wounds” – Malcolm personifying Scotland
4.3 “not in the legions / of horrid hell can come a devil more damn’d / in evils to top
Macbeth” – Macduff emphasising how evil Macbeth is
Act 5
5.1 “out, damned spot! Out, I say!” – L.Macbeth while sleep walking
5.1 “what, will these hands ne’er be clean?” – L.Macbeth
5.1 “all the perfumes / of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand” – L.Macbeth
5.1 “unnatural deeds / do breed unnatural troubles; infected minds / to their deaf pillows will
discharge their secrets. / More needs she the divine than the physician.” – Doctor saying L.Macbeth
has committed so many sins that her mental illness can only be cured by God
5.2 “meet we the medicine of the sickly weal, / and with him pour we, in our country’s purge, / each
drop of us” – Caithness saying they will shed every drop of blood needed to purify the country
5.3 “I’ll fight, till from my bones my flesh be hack.” – Macbeth wishes to die valiantly in battle
5.3 “if thou couldst, doctor, cast / the water of my land, find her disease, / and purge it to a sound
and pristine health” – Macbeth, he still has humanity and is not completely merciless and wants
Scotland to be cured
“I have almost forgot the taste of fears” – Macbeth has become numb to killing due to all of his
murders
“I have supp’d full with horrors; / direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts, /cannot once start
me.” – Macbeth has become desensitised to murder and horror
“I pull in resolution, / and begin to doubt the equivocation of the fiend, / that lies like truth.” –
Macbeth only now starts to doubt the witches, similarity to Duncan trusting the wrong people
“The devil himself could not pronounce a title / more hateful to mine ear” – Young Siward, even the
Devil cannot say Macbeth’s name
“Macduff was from his mother’s womb / untimely ripped”- Macduff, was not of “woman born”

“Behold, where stands / the usurper’s cursed head” – Macduff showing the army Macbeth’s severed
head, epithet as he was an illegitimate king

“This dead butcher and his fiend like queen” – Macduff, epithet for Macbeth as he has killed so
much