Macbeth Quotes

“By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“I dare do all that may become a man;
Who dares do more, is none”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“All causes shall give way: I am in blood
Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“The love that follows us sometime is our trouble, which still we thank as love.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“So fair and foul a day I have not seen.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“What, you egg?”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And falls on the other.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“Your face, my thane, is as a book where men
May read strange matters. To beguile the time,
Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,
Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under't.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“And nothing is, but what is not.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“My dull brain was wrought with things forgotten.”
― William Shakespeare

“It was sort of like Macbeth, thought Fat Charlie, an hour later; in fact, if the witches in Macbeth had been four little old ladies and if, instead of stirring cauldrons and intoning dread incantations, they had just welcomed Macbeth in and fed him turkey and rice and peas spread out on white china plates on a red-and-white patterned plastic tablecloth -- not to mention sweet potato pudding and spice cabbage -- and encouraged him to take second helpings, and thirds, and then, when Macbeth had declaimed that nay, he was stuffed nigh unto bursting and on his oath could truly eat no more, the witches had pressed upon him their own special island rice pudding and a large slice of Mrs. Bustamonte's famous pineapple upside-down cake, it would have been exactly like Macbeth.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d.
Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined.
Harpier cries ’Tis time, ’tis time.

Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter’d venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digg’d i’ the dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Silver’d in the moon’s eclipse,
Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver’d by a drab,
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron,
For the ingredients of our cauldron.

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.”
― William Shakespeare

“Infected minds to their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“What, you egg? / [He stabs him.]”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“Ring the alarum-bell! Blow, wind! come, wrack!
At least we'll die with harness on our back.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“Those he commands move only in command,
Nothing in love: now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe
Upon a dwarfish thief”
― William Shakespeare

“Too nice, and yet too true!”
― William Shakespeare

“The merciless Macdonald
(Worthy to be a rebel, — for, to that,
The multiplying villainies of nature
Do swarm upon him) from the Western Isles
Of kerns and gallowglasses is supplied;
And Fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling,
Showed like a rebel's whore: but all's too weak:
For brave Macbeth (well he deserves that name)
Disdaining Fortune, with his brandish'd steel,
Which smoked with bloody execution,
Like valour's minion,
Carv'd out his passage.”
― William Shakespeare

“Tomorrow,and tomorrow,and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.
Out, out, brief candle.
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more.
It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“Życie jest jedynie przelotnym cieniem;
żałosnym aktorem, co przez godzinę puszy
się i miota na scenie, po czym znika;
opowieścią idioty, pełną wrzasku i wściekłości,
a nie znaczącą nic.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“New honors come upon him,
Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mold
But with the aid of use.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“Look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under’t”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“Out, damned spot: out, I say. One; two. Why
then ’tis time to do’t. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord,
fie, a soldier and afeared? What need we fear? Who
knows it when none can call our power to account?”
― Shakespeare, Macbeth

“Methought I heard a voice cry, ‘Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep: the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast.”
― Shakespeare

“In order that a new world may step in, this world must for a time disappear. The murderers and the murder must be insulated -- cut off by an immeasurable gulf from the ordinary tide and succession of human affairs locked up and sequestered in some deep recess; we must be made sensible that the world of ordinary life is suddenly arrested -- laid asleep -- tranced -- racked into a dread armistice; time must be annihilated; relation to things without abolished; and all must pass self-withdrawn into a deep syncope and suspension of earthly passion. Hence it is, that, when the deed is done, when the work of darkness is perfect, then the world of darkness passes away like a pageantry in the clouds: the knocking at the gate is heard; and it makes known audibly that the reaction has commenced: the human has made its reflux upon the fiendish; the pulses of life are beginning to beat again...”
― Thomas de Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater & Other Writings

“The Birnam Oak by Stewart Stafford

Medieval guardian, limpet oak,
Reinforced branches, sunlit soak,
Gnarled limbs in supplicant pose,
A statuesque deity in thorny repose.

Set up tent 'neath a canopy deep,
Where my pilgrim forbears sleep,
Midges swarming campfire's glow,
And drowsy me, to slumber go.

May roots prosper far from sight,
Defying storm, flame, chainsaw's bite,
Give verdant breath to creation's plan.
Until Earth falls from human hand.

© 2024, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“So Scotland is to be thought of as a country different from England... the reader and perhaps still more the spectator of Macbeth are made to envisage unmistakably a 'Caledonia stern and wild', a chilly and thinly-populated land of mountains and shaggy woods rather than ploughed fields, of barren moors and battlefields and grim fortresses rather than towns, villages and farms. The elements in this most atmospheric of plays accord with the wild setting and with the wild deeds occurring in it. The weather is unpredictable, more often than not stormy and boistrous... with dark nights or ominous half-light predominant over brief glimpses of the day and the sun.”
― Arthur Melville Clark, Murder Under Trust, or The Topical Macbeth and other Jacobean Matters

“All hail Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Glamis!
All hail Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor!
All hail Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter!”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“Lesser than Macbeth, and greater.

Not so happy, yet much happier.

Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none.
So all hail, Macbeth and Banquo!

Banquo and Macbeth, all hail!”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“Nay, how will you do for a husband?"
"Why, I can buy me twenty at any market.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth