famous quotes from the tragedy of macbeth
Famous Quotes from The Tragedy of Macbeth
The Tragedy of Macbeth is the shortest of Shakespeare's tragedies and is considered as one of the most powerful and the darkest of his works. This article compiles some famous Macbeth quotes.
Did You Know?
Macbeth's real name was Mac Bethad mac Findlaích and Lady Macbeth's was Gruoch. Mac Bethad means son of life, in modern Gaelic.Famous Macbeth Quotes
When shall we three meet again in thunder, lightning, or in rain? When the hurlyburly's done,
When the battle 's lost and won.
Act 1, Scene 1
Fair is foul, and foul is fair
Act 1, Scene 1
What, can the devil speak true?
- Act 1, Scene 3
Nothing in his life
Became him like the leaving it
- Act 1, Scene 4
There's no art
To find the mind's construction in the face.
- Act 1, Scene 4
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.
- Act 1, Scene 4
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!
- Act 1, Scene 5
Yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full o' the milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way.
- Act 1, Scene 5
Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under't.
- Act 1, Scene 5
I dare do all that may become a man; Who dares do more is none.
- Act 1, Scene 7
Bring forth men-children only;
For thy undaunted mettle should compose
Nothing but males.
- Act 1, Scene 7
False face must hide what the false heart doth know.
- Act 1, Scene 7
Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand?
- Act 2, Scene 1
Methought I heard a voice cry "Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep," the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast.
- Act 2, Scene 2
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.
-Act 2, Scene 2
There's daggers in men's smiles.
- Act 2, Scene 3
Who could refrain,
That had a heart to love, and in that heart
Courage to make's love known?
- Act 2, Scene 3
Thou hast it now: king, Cawdor, Glamis, all,
As the weird women promised, and I fear
Thou play'dst most foully for't
- Act 3, Scene 1
What's done is done.
- Act 3, Scene 2
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.
- Act 3, Scene 2
Come, seeling night,
Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day
And with thy bloody and invisible hand
Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond
Which keeps me pale. Light thickens, and the crow
Makes wing to th' rooky wood.
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse;
Whiles night's black agents to their preys do rouse.
- Act 3, Scene 2
The times have been,
That, when the brains were out, the man would die,
And there an end, but now they rise again,
With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,
And push us from our stools: this is more strange
Than such a murder is.
- Act 3, Scene 4
It will have blood; they say, blood will have blood
- Act 3, Scene 4
I am in blood
Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er
- Act 3, Scene 4
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
- Act 4, Scene 1
.... for none of woman born Shall harm Macbeth.
- Act 4, Scene 1
Macbeth shall never vanquish'd be until
Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill
Shall come against him.
-Act 4, Scene 1
Macbeth shall never vanquish'd be until
Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill
Shall come against him.
- Act 4, Scene 1
From this moment
The very firstlings of my heart shall be
The firstlings of my hand
- Act 4, Scene 1
.... All my pretty ones?
Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
At one fell swoop?
- Act 4, Scene 3
Out, damned spot! out, I say!
- Act 5, Scene 1
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.
-Act 5, Scene 3
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?
-Act 5, Scene 3
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.
- Act 5, Scene 5
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.
- Act 5, Scene 5
Macduff was from his mother's womb
Untimely ripp'd
- Act 5, Scene 8
.... 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!"
There are stories about Macbeth being a cursed play. It is believed that Shakespeare 'borrowed' a few lines for a coven a witches. And when they saw their words being repeated by the actors, they cursed the play. During those times, it was believed that saying the word Macbeth would bring bad luck. Whatever legends say, Macbeth still remains to be one of Shakespeare's most popular plays.-Act 5, Scene 8