Macbeth Quote Bank
Act 1
Scene 1:
‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair’
Scene 2:
‘As cannons over-charged with double cracks.’
‘Disdaining Fortune, with his brandish’d steel,’
‘Like Valour’s minion’
‘What he hath lost, noble Macbeth hath won.’
Scene 3:
‘So foul and fair a day I have not seen.’
‘Lesser than Macbeth, and greater.’
‘Why do you dress me in borrow’d robes?’
‘To win us to our harm,/The instruments of darkness tell us truths’
‘If chance will have me king, why chance may crown me/Without my stir.’
Scene 4:
‘There’s no art/ To find the mind’s construction in the face.’
‘Stars, hide your fires,/Let no light see my black and deep desires,’
Scene 5:
‘Too full of the milk of human kindness.’
‘That I may pour my spirits in thine ear’
‘Come you spirits/that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here!/ And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full/Of direst cruelty!’
‘Take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers’
‘Look like the innocent flower/ But be the serpent under’t’
Scene 6:
N/A
Scene 7:
‘Who should against his murderer shut the door,/Not bear the knife myself.’
‘Vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself’
‘I dare do all that may become a man;/Who dares do more is none.’
‘What beast was’t than/ That made you break this enterprise to me?’
‘given suck’
‘I would, while it was smiling in my face,/Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums,/And dashed the brains out’
‘False face must hide what false heart doth know’
Act 2
Scene 1
‘Is this a dagger which I see before me?’
‘Or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation,/Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?’
‘Thou marshall’st me’
‘While I threat, he lives;/Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.’
Scene 2
‘That which hath made them drunk, hath made me/bold;’
‘Had he not resembled/My father as he slept, I had done’t’
‘But wherefore could I not pronounce Amen?/ I had most need of blessing, and Amen/ Stuck in my throat.’
‘Macbeth shall sleep no more.’
‘Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood/Clean from my hand?’
‘My hands are of your colour, but I shame/To wear a heart so white.’
‘A little water clears us of this deed.’
Scene 3
‘O horror, horror, horror,’
‘What in our house?’
‘Too cruel, anywhere.’
‘O, yet I do repent me of my fury/That I did kill them.’
‘Manly readiness’
‘Where we are,/There’s daggers in men’s smiles;’
Scene 4
‘A falcon, towering in her pride of place,/ Was by a mousing owl hawked at, and killed.’
Act 3
Scene 1
‘I fear/Thou played’st most foully for’t’
‘I must become a borrower of the night
‘Let every man be master of his time’
‘Upon my head they plac’d a fruitless crown/And put a barren sceptre in my gripe,’
‘Ay in the catalogue ye go for men,’
‘Banquo was your enemy’
Scene 2
‘We have scorch’d the snake, not kill’d it’
‘Sleek o’er your rugged looks./ Be bright and jovial among your guests tonight.’
‘Of full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!’
‘Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,’
Scene 3
N/A
Scene 4
‘Whole as marble, founded as the rock…but now I am cabined, cribbed, confined’
‘There the grown serpent lies: the worm, that’s fled,/Hath nature that in time will venom breed.’
‘never shake/Thy gory locks at me!’
‘Prithee, see there! Behold! Look! Lo! How say you?/ Why -what care I?’
‘blood will have blood’
‘I am in blood/Stepp’d in so far that I should wade no more,’
‘We are yet but young in deed.’
Scene 5
‘This night I’ll spend/ Unto a dismal and fatal end.’
Scene 6
N/A
Act 4
Scene 1
‘How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!/ What is’t you do?’
‘Finger of birth-strangle babe,/ Ditch delivered by a drab.’
‘Though you untie the winds and let them fight/Against the churches.’
‘Then live Macduff. What need I fear of thee?/But yet I’ll make assurance double sure,/And take a bond of fate: thou shalt not live.’
‘Saw you the weïrd sisters?’
Scene 2
N/A
Scene 3
‘Let us seek out some desolate shade and there/Weep our sad bosoms empty.’
‘Bleed, bleed, poor country.’
‘black Macbeth/Will seem as pure as snow,’
‘O Scotland, Scotland!’
‘O nation miserable!’
‘they were well at peace’
‘Your wife and babes/ Savagely slaughtered.’
‘Dispute it like a man.’
‘I must also feel it as a man;’
‘let grief/Convert to anger. Blunt not the heart, enrage it.’
‘O, I could play the woman with mine eyes/And braggart with my tongue.’
‘Macbeth/Is ripe for shaking’
Act 5
Scene 1
‘Out, damned spot!’
‘All the perfumes of /Arabia will not sweeten this little hand’
‘Wash your hands, put on your night-gown,’
‘To bed, to bed, to bed’
Scene 2
‘Those he commands, move only in command,/Nothing in love.’
Scene 3
‘The mind I sway by, and the heart I bear,/Shall never sag with doubt, nor shake with fear.’
‘I’ll fight till from my bones my flesh be hack’d. Give me my armour.’
Scene 4
N/A
Scene 5
‘She should have died hereafter;’
‘Out, out, brief candle,’
‘Life’s but a walking shadow’
‘A poor player/That struts and frets his hour upon the stage.’
Scene 6
N/A
Scene 7
‘They have tied me to a stake; I cannot fly’
‘But bear-like I must fight’
Scene 8
‘Why should I play the Roman fool and die/On mine own sword?’
‘I have no words;/My voice is in my sword.’
‘Yet I will try the last.’
Scene 9
‘Henceforth be earls’
‘Of this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen,’