Macbeth - Character and Corresponding Theme Quotes

This set involves one quote for each theme relevant to the characters of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Macduff and Banquo

Macbeth - Supernatural

Is this a dagger which I see before me?

Macbeth - Ambition

I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, only vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself (and falls on th’other)

Macbeth - Guilt 1 (Neptune)

Will all great Neptune’s oceans wash this blood clean from my hand?

Macbeth - Guilt 2 (Sleep)

Macbeth does murder sleep

Macbeth - Gender

When you durst do it, then you were a man ( - Lady Macbeth)

Macbeth - Power 1 (To be thus)

To be thus is nothing, but to be safely thus

Macbeth - Power 2 (Crown + Sceptre)

On my head they have placed a fruitless crown, and put a barren sceptre in my gripe

Macbeth - Fate

If chance will have me King, why chance may crown me without my stir'

Macbeth - Appearance vs Reality

False face must hid what the false heart doth know

Lady Macbeth - Ambition

Art not without ambition, but without illness should attend it

Lady Macbeth - Guilt

Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?

Lady Macbeth - Gender 1 (Unsex)

Unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty

Lady Macbeth - Gender 2 (Milk)

Take my milk for gall

Lady Macbeth - Appearance vs Reality

Look like th’innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t’

Witches - Fate

All hail Macbeth, hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor…Glamis…thou shalt be King hereafter

Witches - Supernatural

Fair is foul, and foul is fair

Witches - Appearance vs Reality

None of woman born shall harm Macbeth

Macduff - Power

O nation miserable!

Macduff - Guilt (gender)

I must also feel it as a man

Macduff - Ambition

Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself; within my sword’s length set him

Banquo - Ambition

That myself should be the root and father of many Kings'

Banquo - Supernatural

To win us to our harm, the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, to betray’s in deepest consequence

Banquo - Fate

If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then to me