Macbeth Key Quotes

‘When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?’
The Witches 1.1

‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair.’
The Witches 1.1

‘The weird sisters, hand in hand,
Posters of the sea and land,
Thus do go about, about.’
The Witches 1.3

‘What are these
So wither'd and so wild in their attire,
That look not like the inhabitants o' the earth,
And yet are on 't?’

Banquo about the Witches 1.3

‘Say, from whence
You owe this strange intelligence?’
Macbeth to the Witches 1.3

‘What! can the devil speak true?’

Banquo on discovering the Thane’s death and Macbeth’s subsequent promotion 1.3

‘Come what come may,
Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.’

Macbeth 1.3

‘There's no art
To find the mind's construction in the face’

Duncan about the treacherous ex Thane of Cawdor 1.4

‘Yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full o' the milk of human kindness.’
Lady Macbeth about Macbeth 1.5

‘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’
Lady Macbeth 1.5

‘Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers.’
Lady Macbeth 1.5

‘Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell’
Lady Macbeth 1.5

‘Look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under 't.’
Lady Macbeth to Macbeth 1.5

‘If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly’
Macbeth 1.7

‘Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself,
And falls on the other.’
Macbeth 1.7

‘Was the hope drunk,
Wherein you dress'd yourself? hath it slept since,
And wakes it now, to look so green and pale
At what it did so freely?’
Lady Macbeth to Macbeth 1.7

‘I dare do all that may become a man;
Who dares do more is none.’
Macbeth 1.7

‘How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have plucked my ****** from his boneless gums,
And dash'd the brains out’
Lady Macbeth 1.7

‘Screw your courage to the sticking-place,
And we'll not fail.’
Lady Macbeth 1.7

‘False face must hide what the false heart doth know.’
Macbeth 1.7

‘There's husbandry in heaven;
Their candles are all out.’
Banquo to Fleance 2.1

‘Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? … or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?’
Macbeth 2.1

‘Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my whereabout.’
Macbeth 2.1

‘The bell invites me.
Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven or to hell.’
Macbeth 2.1

‘That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold,
What hath quenched them hath given me fire.’
Lady Macbeth 2.2

‘It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman,
Which gives the stern'st good-night.’
Lady Macbeth 2.2

‘The attempt and not the deed
Confounds us.’

Lady Macbeth as she waits for Macbeth to return from committing regicide 2.2

‘Wherefore could I not pronounce 'Amen'?
I had most need of blessing, and 'Amen'
Stuck in my throat.’
Macbeth 2.2

‘I am afraid to think what I have done;
Look on't again I dare not.’
Macbeth 2.2

‘Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand?’
Macbeth 2.2

‘A little water clears us of this deed.’
Lady Macbeth 2.2

‘The night has been unruly: where we lay,
Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say,
Lamentings heard i' the air; strange screams of death’
Lennox to Macbeth just before Macduff confirms Duncan’s murder 2.3

‘Had I but lived an hour before this chance,
I had lived a blessed time.’
Maceth 2.3

‘There's daggers in men's smiles.’
Donaldbain to Malcolm 2.3

‘Thou hast it now: King, Cawdor, Glamis, all,
As the weird women promised; and, I fear,
Thou play'dst most foully for't.’
Banquo about the Witches prophecies and Macbeth’s fulfillment of them 3.1

‘Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown,
And put a barren sceptre in my gripe,
Thence to be wrench'd with an unlineal hand,
No son of mine succeeding.’
Macbeth before ordering the death of Banquo 3.1

‘Things without all remedy
Should be without regard; what's done is done.’

Lady Macbeth 3.2

‘We have scorched the snake, not killed it’

Macbeth 3.2

‘Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill’

Macbeth 3.2

‘But now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in

To saucy doubts and fears.’

Macbeth 3.4

‘Thou canst not say I did it; never shake

Thy gory locks at me.’

Macbeth to the ghost of Banquo 3.4

‘Blood will have blood.’

Macbeth 3.4

‘I am in blood

Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more,

Returning were as tedious as go o'er.’

Macbeth 3.4

‘Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.’

The Witches 4.1

‘By the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes.’

The Witches 4.1

‘How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!’

Macbeth 4.1

‘Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn

The power of man, for none of woman born

Shall harm Macbeth.’

The Witches 4.1

‘Macbeth shall never vanquished be until

Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill

Shall come against him.’

The Witches 4.1

‘When our actions do not,

Our fears do make us traitors.’

Lady Macduff 4.2

‘Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak

Whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break.’

Malcolm to Macduff as he consoles him for the loss of his family 4.3

‘What, all my pretty chickens and their dam

At one fell swoop?’

Macduff after being told of his family’s fate 4.3

‘Out, damned spot! out, I say!’

Lady Macbeth 5.1

‘What's done cannot be undone.’

Lady Macbeth 5. 1

‘Unnatural deeds

Do breed unnatural troubles’

The Doctor 5.1

‘Now does he feel his title

Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe

Upon a dwarfish thief.’

Malcolm 5.2

‘Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased

Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow’

Macbeth to the Doctor about his wife 5.3

‘She should have died hereafter’

Macbeth 5.5

‘Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more’
Macbeth 5.5

‘Macduff was from his mother's womb
Untimely ripped.’
Macduff 5.8