Macbeth key quotes

• Three Witches: 'Fair is foul, and foul is fair.'
• King Duncan: 'What bloody man is that?'
• Banquo: 'If you can look into the seeds of time, And say which grain will grow and which will not.'
• Banquo: 'Or have we eaten on the insane root That takes the reason prisoner?'
• Banquo: 'What! can the devil speak true?'
• King Duncan: 'Present fears Are less than horrible imaginings.'
• Donalbain: 'There's daggers in men's smiles'
• Witches: 'Double, double toil and trouble: Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.'
• Second Witch: 'By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes.'
• Third apparition: 'Macbeth shall never vanquished be until Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane Hill Shall come against him.'
• Witches: 'A deed without a name.'
• Lady Macduff: 'When our actions do not, Our fears do make us traitors.'
• Angus: 'Now does he feel his titleHang loose about him, like a giant's robeUpon a dwarfish thief.'
• Macduff: 'Tongue nor heartCannot conceive nor name thee!'
• Doctor: 'The patientMust minister to himself.'
• Macduff: 'Those clamorous harbingers of blood and death.'
• Macbeth: 'Nothing isBut what is not.'
• Macbeth: 'Come what come may,Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.'
• Macbeth: 'False face must hide what the false heart doth know.'
• Macbeth: 'I dare do all that may become a man;Who dares do more is none.'
• Macbeth: 'If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere wellIt were done quickly.'
• Macbeth: 'To prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself and falls on th'other'
• 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.'
• Macbeth: 'Thou sure and firm-set earth,Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fearThy very stones prate of my whereabout'
• Macbeth: 'Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this bloodClean from my hand? No, this my hand will ratherThe multitudinous seas incarnadine,Making the green one red.'
• Macbeth: 'Methought I heard a voice cry, 'Sleep no more!Macbeth does murder sleep: the innocent sleep,Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,Chief nourisher in life's feast.'
• Macbeth: 'Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.'
• Macbeth: 'It will have blood, they say: blood will have blood.'
• Macbeth: 'How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!'
• Macbeth: 'The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon!Where gott'st thou that goose look?'
• Macbeth: 'To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,Creeps in this petty pace from day to dayTo the last syllable of recorded time,And all our yesterdays have lighted foolsThe way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!Life's but a walking shadow, a poor playerThat struts and frets his hour upon the stageAnd then is heard no more: it is a taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury,Signifying nothing.'
• Macbeth: 'I bear a charmed life.'
• Lady Macbeth: 'The raven himself is hoarseThat croaks the fatal entrance of DuncanUnder my battlements'
• Lady Macbeth: 'Yet do I fear thy nature;It is too full o' the milk of human kindness.'
• Lady Macbeth: 'Come you spirits, That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here.'
• Lady Macbeth: 'O, neverShall sun that morrow see!Your face, my thane, is as a book where menMay 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. He that's comingMust be provide for: and you shall putThis night's great business into my dispatch,Which shall to all our nights and days to comeGive solely sovereign sway and masterdom.'
• Lady Macbeth: 'Come, you spiritsThat tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,And fill me from the crown to the toe top-fullOf direst cruelty. Make thick my blood.Stop up th' access and passage to remorse,That no compunctious visitings of natureShake my fell purpose, nor keep peace betweenTh' effect and it. Come to my woman's breasts,And take my milk for gall, you murd'ring ministers,Wherever in your sightless substancesYou wait on nature's mischief. 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!""'
• Lady Macbeth: 'Would'st thou have thatWhich thou esteem'st the ornament of life,And live a coward in thine own esteem,Letting "I dare not" wait upon "I would,"Like the poor cat i' th' adage?'
• Lady Macbeth: '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: 'I laid their daggers ready; He could not miss 'em. Had he not resembled My father as he slept, I had done't.'