Ambition

• "My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,

  Shakes so my single state of man"


  Macbeth -He is in a moral battle with his ambition and states it's impacting his mental health.
• "Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair,

  And make my seated heart knock at my ribs"


  Macbeth thinks the thought of murdering Duncan is terrifying. He's still in a moral battle.
• " I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition"


  Macbeth cannot force himself to evil things. It's his ambition that encourages action.
• "o'erleaps itself And falls on th' other."


  Macbeth realizes if ambition is too great a person may lose everything.
• Macbeth's ambition is a "Fatal flaw"


  His own ambition is his greatest downfall.
• "Thou wouldst be great

  Art not without ambition, but without

  The illness should attend it"


  Lady Macbeth speaks these lines as she reflects on her husband's character. She knows that Macbeth is capable of ambitious dreams, but she thinks that he is unwilling to display the ruthless behavior necessary to achieve those dreams
• "Stars hide your fires, let not light see my black and deep desires."


  Macbeth admits to always of had some repressed emotion to overtake the king. He seems regretful of these feelings.
• "That is a step on which I must fall down, o else o'er leap, for in my ay it lies."

  Macbeth realizes what he will have to do if he wishes to become king.
• Macbeth imagines his current titles as prologues to his mighty drama on kinship


  "Two truths are told,

  As happy prologues to the swelling act"
• Macbeth's mind turns straight to murder


  "My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical"
• Banquo sees how ambition has entranced Macbeth

  "Look how our partner's rapt"
• Lady Macbeth calls on evil spirits to fulfil her ambitions

  "Come, you spirits

  That tend on mortal thoughts,

  unsex me here"
• Macbeth is prepared to risk the afterlife- his ambition is very controlling


  "But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,

  We'd jump the life to come"
• Macbeth shows how ambition has made him reckless and tyrannical

  "Though the treasure

  Of nature's germen tumble

  altogether

  Even till destruction sicken

  answer me

  To what I ask you"