Macbeth Quotes

Lady Macbeth Act 1

• “Yet I do fear thy nature is too full o’ the milk of human kindness”

• “Unsex me here”

• “Fill me from the crown to the toe top full of direst cruelty”

• “Look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under’t”

• “Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums and dash’d the brains out”

Thematic statements

Ambition- “In Macbeth, Shakespeare portrays ambition not as an uncontrollable force, but as a temptation that characters consciously submit to in their pursuit of power, leading to their moral and eventual physical hamartia.”

The supernatural- “Shakespeare explores the supernatural in Macbeth as a manipulative influence that magnifies suppressed desires, suggesting that those who seek power through unnatural means are doomed to self-destruction.”

Guilt - “Shakespeare explores guilt in Macbeth as a consequence of violating the natural and divine order, illustrating how a guilty conscience torments the soul and severs the individual’s connection with God.”

Lady Macbeth Act 2

• “My hands are of your colour; but I shame to wear a heart so white”

Lady Macbeth Act 3

• “It’s the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil”

• “A little water clears us of this dead”

• “Are you a man?”

Lady Macbeth Act 5

• “Out, out damned spot!”

• “What’s done cannot be undone”

Macbeth Act 1

• “Foul and fair a day I have not seen”

• “Stay you imperfect speakers, tell me more”

• “O valiant cousin! Worthy gentleman!”

• “Stars hide your fires, let not light see my deep and dark desires”

• “Vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself”

Banquo Act 1

• “ Oftentimes, to win us to our harm the instruments of darkness tell us truths”

Macbeth Act 2

• “is this a dagger which I see before me”

• “Proceeding from the heat oppressed brain”

• “But wherefore could I not pronounce ‘Amen’”

Macbeth Act 3

• “Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown”

• “ O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!”

• “Be innocent of the knowledge”

• “The tables full”

Apparitions

• “A child crowned with a tree in its hand”

• “Macbeth shall never vanquished be until Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill shall come against him”

• “An external curse fall on you!”

Banquo Act 3

• “I fear thou play’dst most foully for’t”

Macduff Act 4

• “But I must also feel it as a man”

• “Fit to govern!/ No, not fit to live

Macbeth Act 5

• “Out, out, brief candle”

• “Life’s but a walking shadow”

• “Macduff was from his mothers womb, untimely ripped”

• “I will not yield”

Witches

• Fair is foul and foul is fair

• By the pricking of my thumbs something wicked this way comes