Here are the 129 best handpicked quotes from “Macbeth” by William Shakespeare:
From “You lack the season of all natures, sleep.” to “My hands are of your color, but I shame to wear a heart so white.”
So if you want the best quotes from “Macbeth,” then you’re in the right place.
Let’s get right to it!
My Favorite “Macbeth” Quote
#1
“You lack the season of all natures, sleep.”
— Macbeth
While hustling every single day without taking a pause has become the norm, prioritizing rest has become less common for many.
Similar to nature, we also experience our own seasons, and one of these is the season where we should honor the importance of rest and its vital role in allowing us to renew, grow, and continue our daily tasks.
Neglecting the necessity of rest and the opportunity to disconnect from our daily hustle to reconnect with ourselves may hinder our chances of personal growth and evolution.
Best Handpicked Quotes From “Macbeth” by William Shakespeare
#2
“Lay on, Macduff, and damned be him that first cries, ‘Hold, enough!'”
— Macbeth
#3
“Macduff was from his mother’s womb untimely ripped.”
— Macbeth
#4
“Those clamorous harbingers of blood and death.”
— Macbeth
#5
“I ‘gin to be aweary of the sun, and wish the estate o’ the world were now undone. Ring the alarum-bell! Blow, wind! come, wrack! At least we’ll die with harness on our back.”
— Macbeth
#6
“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, 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.”
— Macbeth
#7
“I have almost forgot the taste of fears. The time has been my senses would have cooled to hear a night-shriek, and my fell of hair would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir as life were in’t: I have supped full with horrors; direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts, cannot once start me.”
— Macbeth
#8
“The cry is still, ‘They come!'”
— Macbeth
#9
“Throw physic to the dogs: I’ll none of it.”
— Macbeth
#10
“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.”
— Macbeth
#11
“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.”
— Macbeth
#12
“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.”
— Macbeth
#13
“Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.”
— Macbeth
#14
“The west yet glimmers with some streaks of day: now spurs the lated traveller apace to gain the timely inn.”
— Macbeth
#15
“But now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in to saucy doubts and fears.”
— Macbeth
#16
“Now, good digestion wait on appetite, and health on both!”
— Macbeth
#17
“Thou canst not say I did it; never shake thy gory locks at me.”
— Macbeth
#18
“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.”
— Macbeth
#19
“Hence, horrible shadow! Unreal mockery, hence!”
— Macbeth
#20
“Stand not upon the order of your going, but go at once.”
— Macbeth
#21
“Blood will have blood.”
— Macbeth
#22
“I am in blood stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er.”
— Macbeth
#23
“I bear a charmed life.”
— Macbeth
#24
“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.”
— Macbeth
#25
“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.”
— Macbeth
#26
“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.”
— Macbeth
#27
“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.”
— Macbeth
#28
“How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!”
— Macbeth
#29
“A deed without a name.”
— Macbeth
#30
“Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn the power of man, for none of woman born shall harm Macbeth.”
— Macbeth
#31
“I’ll make assurance double sure, and take a bond of fate.”
— Macbeth
#32
“Macbeth shall never vanquished be until Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill shall come against him.”
— Macbeth
#33
“The weird sisters.”
— Macbeth
#34
“When our actions do not, our fears do make us traitors.”
— Macbeth
#35
“He loves us not; he wants the natural touch.”
— Macbeth
#36
“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.”
— Macbeth
#37
“Stands Scotland where it did?”
— Macbeth
#38
“Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.”
— Macbeth
#39
“What, all my pretty chickens and their dam at one fell swoop?”
— Macbeth
#40
“Out, damned spot; out, I say!”
— Macbeth
#41
“Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard?”
— Macbeth
#42
“Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?”
— Macbeth
#43
“The Thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now?”
— Macbeth
#44
“All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.”
— Macbeth
#45
“What’s done cannot be undone.”
— Macbeth
#46
“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.”
— Macbeth
#47
“Now does he feel his title hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe upon a dwarfish thief.”
— Macbeth
#48
“Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane, I cannot taint with fear.”
— Macbeth
#49
“The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon! Where gott’st thou that goose look?”
— Macbeth
#50
“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.”
— Macbeth
#51
“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?”
— Macbeth
#52
“The patient must minister to himself.”
— Macbeth
#53
“Duncan is in his grave; after life’s fitful fever he sleeps well: treason has done his worst; nor steel, nor poison, malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing, can touch him further.”
— Macbeth
#54
“Lady Macbeth: Things without all remedy should be without regard; what’s done is done.
Macbeth: We have scotched the snake, not killed it; she’ll close and be herself, while our poor malice remains in danger of her former tooth.”
— Macbeth
#55
“Leave no rubs nor botches in the work.”
— Macbeth
#56
“First Murderer: We are men, my liege.
Macbeth: Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men, as hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs, shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wol.”
— Macbeth
#57
“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
#58
“Let every man be master of his time till seven at night.”
— Macbeth
#59
“I must become a borrower of the night for a dark hour or twain.”
— Macbeth
#60
“Thou hast it now: King, Cawdor, Glamis, all, as the weird women promised; and, I fear, thou play’dst most foully for’t.”
— Macbeth
#61
“Thriftless ambition, that wilt ravin up thine own life’s means!”
— Macbeth
#62
“A falcon, towering in her pride of place, was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed.”
— Macbeth
#63
“There’s daggers in men’s smiles.”
— Macbeth
#64
“Had I but lived an hour before this chance, I had lived a blessed time.”
— Macbeth
#65
“Shake off this downy sleep, death’s counterfeit, and look on death itself! up, up, and see the great doom’s image!”
— Macbeth
#66
“Confusion now hath made his masterpiece! Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope the Lord’s anointed temple, and stole thence the life o’ the building!”
— Macbeth
#67
“Tongue nor heart cannot conceive nor name thee!”
— Macbeth
#68
“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, and prophesying with accents terrible of dire combustion and confused events new hatched to the woeful time. The obscure bird clamored the livelong night: some say the earth was feverous and did shake.”
— Macbeth
#69
“The labor we delight in physics pain.”
— Macbeth
#70
“Porter: Drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things.
Macduff: What three things does drink especially provoke?
Porter: Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes; it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance.”
— Macbeth
#71
“This place is too cold for hell. I’ll devil-porter it no further: I had thought to have let in some of all professions, that go the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire.”
— Macbeth
#72
“Here’s a knocking, indeed! If a man were porter of hell-gate he should have old turning the key. Knock, knock, knock! Who’s there, i’ the name of Beelzebub? Here’s a farmer that hanged himself on the expectation of plenty.”
— Macbeth
#73
“A little water clears us of this deed.”
— Macbeth
#74
“Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red.”
— Macbeth
#75
“‘Tis the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil.”
— Macbeth
#76
“Infirm of purpose!”
— Macbeth
#77
“I am afraid to think what I have done; look on’t again I dare not.”
— Macbeth
#78
“Glamis hath murdered sleep, and there Cawdor shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more!”
— Macbeth
#79
“Methought I heard a voice cry, ‘Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep!’ the innocent sleep, sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care, the death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature.”
— Macbeth
#80
“Wherefore could I not pronounce ‘Amen’? I had most need of blessing, and ‘Amen’ stuck in my throat.”
— Macbeth
#81
“Had he not resembled my father as he slept I had done’t.”
— Macbeth
#82
“The attempt and not the deed confounds us.”
— Macbeth
#83
“It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman, which gives the stern’st good-night.”
— Macbeth
#84
“That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold, what hath quenched them hath given me fire.”
— Macbeth
#85
“The bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven or to hell.”
— Macbeth
#86
“Thou sure and firm-set earth, hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear thy very stones prate of my whereabout.”
— Macbeth
#87
“Now o’er the one half-world nature seems dead.”
— Macbeth
#88
“Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to feeling as to sight? or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?”
— Macbeth
#89
“There’s husbandry in heaven; their candles are all out.”
— Macbeth
#90
“False face must hide what the false heart doth know.”
— Macbeth
#91
“Bring forth men-children only; for thy undaunted mettle should compose nothing but males.”
— Macbeth
#92
“Screw your courage to the sticking-place, and we’ll not fail.”
— Macbeth
#93
“I have given suck, and know how tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it was smiling in my face, have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums, and dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you have done to this.”
— Macbeth
#94
“I dare do all that may become a man; who dares do more is none.”
— Macbeth
#95
“Letting ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would, like the poor cat i’ the adage.”
— Macbeth
#96
“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? From this time such I account thy love.”
— Macbeth
#97
“I have bought golden opinions from all sorts of people.”
— Macbeth
#98
“Besides, this Duncan hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been so clear in his great office, that his virtues will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against the deep damnation of his taking-off; and pity, like a naked new-born babe, striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubim, horsed upon the sightless couriers of the air, shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, that tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself, and falls on the other.”
— Macbeth
#99
“If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly: if the assassination could trammel up the consequence, and catch with his surcease success; that but this blow might be the be-all and the end-all here, but here, upon this bank and shoal of time, we’d jump the life to come. But in these cases we still have judgment here; that we but teach bloody instructions, which being taught, return to plague the inventor: this even-handed justice commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice to our own lips.”
— Macbeth
#100
“The heaven’s breath smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle: where they most breed and haunt, I have observed, the air is delicate.”
— Macbeth
#101
“This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air nimbly and sweetly recommends itself unto our gentle senses.”
— Macbeth
#102
“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.”
— Macbeth
#103
“Come, thick night, and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, that my keen knife see not the wound it makes, nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, to cry, ‘Hold, hold!'”
— Macbeth
#104
“Come to my woman’s breasts, and take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers.”
— Macbeth
#105
“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; make thick my blood, stop up the access and passage to remorse, that no compunctious visitings of nature shake my fell purpose.”
— Macbeth
#106
“What thou wouldst highly, that wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false, and yet wouldst wrongly win.”
— Macbeth
#107
“Yet do I fear thy nature; it is too full o’ the milk of human kindness.”
— Macbeth
#108
“More is thy due than more than all can pay.”
— Macbeth
#109
“There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.”
— Macbeth
#110
“Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it; he died as one that had been studied in his death to throw away the dearest thing he owed, as ‘t were a careless trifle.”
— Macbeth
#111
“Come what come may, time and the hour runs through the roughest day.”
— Macbeth
#112
“If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me.”
— Macbeth
#113
“Nothing is but what is not.”
— Macbeth
#114
“Present fears are less than horrible imaginings.”
— Macbeth
#115
“Two truths are told, as happy prologues to the swelling act of the imperial theme.”
— Macbeth
#116
“What! can the devil speak true?”
— Macbeth
#117
“Or have we eaten on the insane root that takes the reason prisoner?”
— Macbeth
#118
“Say, from whence you owe this strange intelligence? or why upon this blasted heath you stop our way with such prophetic greeting?”
— Macbeth
#119
“Stands not within the prospect of belief.”
— Macbeth
#120
“If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not.”
— Macbeth
#121
“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?”
— Macbeth
#122
“The weird sisters, hand in hand, posters of the sea and land, thus do go about, about.”
— Macbeth
#123
“Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine.”
— Macbeth
#124
“Sleep shall neither night nor day hang upon his pent-house lid.”
— Macbeth
#125
“What bloody man is that?”
— Macbeth
#126
“Fair is foul, and foul is fair.”
— Macbeth
#127
“First Witch: When shall we three meet again in thunder, lightning, or in rain?
Second Witch: When the hurlyburly’s done, when the battle’s lost and won.”
— Macbeth
#128
“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.”
— Macbeth
#129
“My hands are of your color, but I shame to wear a heart so white.”
— Macbeth