Macbeth key quotes

• "I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, only vaulting ambition"


  Macbeth openly acknowledges his tragic flaw of unbridled ambition as his sole motivation for planning to murder King Duncan.
• "When you durst do it, then you were a man"


  Lady Macbeth attacks Macbeth's masculinity to manipulate him into committing murder, displaying her power through deception.
• "Life ... is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"


  Macbeth's pessimistic view reflects his realisation that all his ambitious actions were ultimately meaningless and will lead to his defeat.
• "Stars hide your fires; let not light see my dark and deep desires"


  Macbeth commands the natural world to hide his evil intentions from God, suggesting awareness of the blasphemous consequences.
• "The dead butcher and his fiend-like queen"


  Malcolm disparages Macbeth as a murderer and Lady Macbeth as demonic, showing their fall from grace.
• "Come you spirits ... Unsex me here"


  Lady Macbeth commands evil spirits to strip her of feminine traits, subverting gender roles through unnatural means.
• "Look like the innocent flower but be the serpent underneath it"


  Lady Macbeth instructs Macbeth to practise deception, using the biblical metaphor of a serpent, a symbol of treachery.
• "Out, damned spot: out, I say!"


  Lady Macbeth's desperate pleading and hallucinations symbolise her loss of power and mental instability due to her guilt.
• "Fair is foul and foul is fair"


  The witches' paradoxical language warns of deception and upheaval, foreshadowing the corruption of natural order and that expectations should not be trusted as whats good will turn bad.
• "Macbeth does murder sleep!"


  Macbeth's exclamation and the personification of sleep suggest both his guilt and his realisation that murdering the king has robbed him of peace and perhaps eternal rest.
• “His mother‘s womb ultimately ripped”


  Macduff can kill Macbeth based on the prophecy as he was born by c-section. There is irony shown in how Macbeth believed he was un-killable.