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'Macbeth' Quotes

William Shakespeare's Famous Play

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Macbeth - William Shakespeare

Macbeth - William Shakespeare

W.W. Norton & Co.
Here are even more quotes from Macbeth, by William Shakespeare.
  • "Ere the bat hath flown
    His cloistered flight, ere, to black Hecate's summons
    The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums
    Hath rung night's yawning peal, there shall be done
    A deed of dreadful note."
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 3.2

  • "Come, seeling night,
    Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day,
    And with thy bloody and invisible hand
    Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond
    Which keeps me pale! Light thickens, and the crow
    Makes wing to the rooky wood;
    Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,
    Whiles night's black agents to their preys do rouse."
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 3.2

  • "Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond
    Which keeps me pale! Light thickens, and the crow
    Makes wing to the rooky wood;
    Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,
    Whiles night's black agents to their preys do rouse."
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 3.2

  • "Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 3.2

  • "The west yet glimmers with some streaks of day:
    Now spurs the lated traveller apace
    To gain the timely inn."
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 3.3

  • "But now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in
    To saucy doubts and fears."
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 3.4

  • "Now, good digestion wait on appetite,
    And health on both!"
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 3.4

  • "Thou canst not say I did it; never shake
    Thy gory locks at me."
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 3.4

  • "What man dare, I dare:
    Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear,
    The armed rhinoceros, or the Hyrcan tiger,-
    Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves
    Shall never tremble."
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 3.4

  • "Hence, horrible shadow!
    Unreal mockery, hence!"
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 3.4

  • "Stand not upon the order of your going,
    But go at once."
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 3.4

  • "Blood will have blood."
    - William Shakespeare, 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."
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 3.4

  • "You lack the season of all natures, sleep."
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 3.4

  • "Round about the cauldron go;
    In the poisoned entrails throw.
    Toad, that under cold stone
    Days and nights hast thirty-one
    Sweltered venom sleeping got,
    Boil thou first i' the charmed pot.
    Double, double toil and trouble;
    Fire burn, and cauldron bubble."
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 4.1

  • "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 howlet's wing,
    For a charm of powerful trouble,
    Like a hell-broth boil and bubble."
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 4.1

  • "Liver of blaspheming Jew,
    Gall of goat, and slips of yew
    Slivered in the moon's eclipse,
    Nose of Turk, and Tartar's lips,
    Finger of birth-strangled babe
    Ditch-delivered by a drab,
    Make the gruel thick and slab."
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 4.1

  • "By the pricking of my thumbs,
    Something wicked this way comes."
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 4.1

  • "How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!"
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 4.1

  • "A deed without a name."
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 4.1

  • "Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn
    The power of man, for none of woman born
    Shall harm Macbeth."
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 4.1

  • "I'll make assurance double sure,
    And take a bond of fate."
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 4.1

  • "Macbeth shall never vanquished be until
    Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill
    Shall come against him."
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 4.1

  • "The weird sisters."
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 4.1.

  • "When our actions do not,
    Our fears do make us traitors."
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 4.2

  • "He loves us not;
    He wants the natural touch.
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 4.2

  • "Son: And must they all be hanged that swear and lie?
    Lady Macduff: Every one.
    Son: Who must hang them?
    Lady Macduff: Why, the honest men.
    Son: Then the liars and swearers are fools, for there are liars and swearers enow to beat the honest men, and hang up them.
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 4.2

  • "Stands Scotland where it did?
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 4.3

  • "Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak
    Whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break."
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 4.3

  • "What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
    At one fell swoop?"
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 4.3

  • "Out, damned spot! out, I say!"
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 5.1

  • "Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard?"
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 5.1

  • "Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?"
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 5.1

  • "The Thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now?"
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 5.1

  • "All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand."
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 5.1

  • "What's done cannot be undone."
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 5. 1

  • "Foul whisperings are abroad. Unnatural deeds
    Do breed unnatural troubles; infected minds
    To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets;
    More needs she the divine than the physician."
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 5.1

  • "Now does he feel his title
    Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe
    Upon a dwarfish thief."
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 5.2

  • "Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane,
    I cannot taint with fear."
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 5.3

  • "The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon!
    Where gott'st thou that goose look?"
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 5.3

  • "I have lived long enough: my way of life
    Is fall'n into the sere, the yellow leaf;
    And that which should accompany old age,
    As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,
    I must not look to have; but in their stead
    Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honor, breath,
    Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not."
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 5.3

  • "Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
    Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
    Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
    And with some sweet oblivious antidote
    Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff
    Which weighs upon the heart?"
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 5.3

  • "The patient
    Must minister to himself."
    - William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 5.3

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