Macbeth key quotes

Macbeth: vaulting

I have no spur / to prick the sides of my intent, but only / vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself

Macbeth: sleep

Methought I heard a voice say, ‘sleep no more! / Macbeth does murder sleep’ - the innocent sleep.

Macbeth: disdaining

For brave Macbeth - well he deserves that name -/ disdaining Fortune, with his brandished steel, / which smoked with bloody execution

Macbeth: chance

If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me / without my stir

Macbeth: stars

Stars, hide your fires; / let not light see my black and deep desires.

Lady Macbeth: serpent

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

Lady Macbeth: hands

My hands are of your colour, but I shame / to wear a heart so white.

Lady Macbeth: out

Out, damned spot! Out, I say!

Lady Macbeth: Spirits

Come, you spirits / that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, / and fill me from the crown to the toe topful / of direst cruelty

Macduff: sacrilegious

Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope / the Lord’s anointed temple, and stole thence / the life o’ the building!

Macduff: bleed

Bleed, bleed, poor country! / Great tyranny, lay thou thy basis sure, / for goodness dare not check thee.

Macduff: children

He has no children. All my pretty ones? / Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?

Macduff: untimely

Macduff was from his mother’s womb / untimely ripp’d

Macduff: usurper’s

Hail, king! For so thou art. Behold where stands / th’ usurper’s cursed head.

The Witches: fair

Fair is foul and foul is fair; / hover through the fog and filthy air

The Witches: vanquished

Macbeth shall never vanquished be until / Great Birnam Wood to High Dunsinane / shall come against him

The Witches: none

None of woman born shall harm Macbeth

The Witches: instruments

The instruments of darkness tell us truths, / win us with honest trifles, to betray’s / in deepest consequence

Malcolm: what

What I am truly, / is thine and my poor country’s to command.

Malcolm: grace

By the grace of Grace, / we will perform in measure, time, and place

Malcolm: weeps

It weeps, it bleeds, and each new day a gash is added to her wounds

Banquo: weird

Thou hast it now: King, Cawdor, Glamis, all / as the weird women promised; and I fear / thou play’dst most foully for’t

Banquo: blood

It will have blood; they say, blood will have blood

Macbeth: chuck

Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck

Duncan: silver

Here lay Duncan, / his silver skin laced with his golden blood.

Duncan: art

There’s no art / to find the mind’s construction in the face.