Quotes & Sayings About Macbeth

And now about the cauldron sing
Like elves and fairies in a ring,
Enchanting all that you put in. — William Shakespeare

Macbeth:
If we should fail?
Lady Macbeth:
We fail?
But screw your courage to the sticking place,
And we'll not fail. — William Shakespeare

My first part in a play was one of the witches in 'Macbeth.' — Zendaya

I grew up with it. As a young actor, I was always aware of the brilliant work of Shakespeare. We studied Romeo & Juliet and Macbeth in school. As a young actor, you're always mystified and intrigued by such brilliant work. To actually have the chance to be involved in this production was a wonderful thing for me. — Ed Westwick

Steve's sales pitch on the NeXT operating system was dazzling," according to Amelio. " He praised the virtues and strengths as though he were describing a performance of Oliver as Macbeth. — Walter Isaacson

Any new producer starting up is to get investors' confidence. Investors are still very very wary of anything to do with the arts world. — Ann Macbeth

Rose of the desert! thou art to me
An emblem of stainless purity,
Of those who, keeping their garments white,
Walk on through life with steps aright. — David Macbeth Moir

The two sides of the equation are the same. We have a tautology. The definition is meaningless. — Norman Macbeth

At 18 I began painting steadily fulltime and at age 20 had my first New York show at the Macbeth Gallery. — Andrew Wyeth

My wide eyes make me look much younger without make-up, and although it's fun to have a line in innocence corrupted, I doubt I'll get to play the vampy vixen or a Hedda Gabler or Lady Macbeth. — Talulah Riley

MACBETH
I will not yield,
To kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet,
And to be baited with the rabble's curse.
Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane,
And thou opposed, being of no woman born,
Yet I will try the last. Before my body
I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,
And damn'd be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough! — William Shakespeare

I'd make a wonderful Lady Macbeth. I'll wear a pair of platform shoes or something. — Bette Midler

He seemed to be lying on the bed. He could not see very well. Her youthful, rapacious face, with blackened eyebrows, leaned over him as he sprawled there.

"'How about my present?' she demanded, half wheedling, half menacing.

"Never mind that now. To work! Come here. Not a bad mouth. Come here. Come closer. Ah!

"No. No use. Impossible. The will but not the way. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Try again. No. The booze, it must be. See Macbeth. One last try. No, no use. Not this evening, I'm afraid.

"All right, Dora, don't you worry. You'll get your two quid all right. We aren't paying by results.

"He made a clumsy gesture. 'Here, give us that bottle. That bottle off the dressing-table.'

"Dora brought it. Ah, that's better. That at least doesn't fail. — George Orwell

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

People see a Macbeth film. They imagine they have seen Macbeth, and don't want to see it again; so when your Mr. Hackett or somebody comes round to act the play, he finds the house empty. That is what has happened to dozens of good plays whose authors have allowed them to be filmed. It shall not happen to mine if I can help it. — George Bernard Shaw

I was my class playwright and I wrote plays set in villages with kings and chiefs.My plays were about treason and betrayals. If they were influenced by Macbeth, they were also influenced by Nigerian plays I had seen and Village Headmaster, a television drama series I had watched as a child. — Sefi Atta

'Macbeth' is one of the best operas ever, and doing it was a great experience. I added some things to the opera based from my experience on the movie - such as some of the special effects and bits of film - to make it new and interesting. It was a very good work and a very good experience. — Dario Argento

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

Methought I heard a voice cry, Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep, - the innocent sleep;
Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast. — William Shakespeare

You lack the season of all natures, sleep. — William Shakespeare

Natural selection is almost always handled in general temps . This means that it has no explanatory power when specific problems arise. — Norman Macbeth

I was playing Rasputin and what was motivating him was crumpet really, and I was extremely keen on crumpet so I was really rather good as Rasputin. And my next catastrophic failure was Macbeth, who I played in the style of a crumpet-lover, and then when Doctor Who came along, I embraced this lunacy, this cloud-cuckoo-land where people had to be convinced by absolute nonsense. I came from a very religious background, so it was easy for me to believe in something I knew nothing about. — Tom Baker

One aspect of Samantha's personality that drove me nuts was her tendency to reveal herself via literary allusions. She called it a quirk, but it was more of a compulsion. Her mother was Lady Macbeth; her father, Big Daddy. An uncle she liked was Mr. Micawber, a favorite governess, Jane Eyre; a doting professor, Mr. Chips.
This curious habit of hers quickly made the voyage from eccentric to bizarre when she began to invoke the names of literary characters to describe moments in our relationship. When she thought I was treating her rudely, she called me Wolf Larsen; if I was standoffish, I was Mr. Darcy; when I dressed too shabbily, I was Tom Joad.
Once, in bed, she yelled out the name Victor as she approached orgasm. I assumed she was referring to Victor Hugo because she'd been reading 'Les Miserables.'. It didn't really bother me that much though it was a little odd being with a woman who thought she was having sex with a dead French author. — John Blumenthal

I dare do all that may become a man;
Who dares do more, is none — William Shakespeare

I think an awful lot of the reasons people put forward for not liking Hillary Clinton play into deep-seated, negative female stereotypes: ambition, secrecy, calculating. I mean, that is Lady Macbeth, a kind of cold woman. I don't think that's Hillary. And I don't think people would judge a man in the same way. — Anne-Marie Slaughter

My mother had not acted for ten years. Not since a reviewer wrote that her portrayal of Lady Macbeth put him in mind of an exasperated society hostess burdened with unmannerly guests who had lost the new tennis balls, left the bathrooms in a mess, and finished the gin. — Victoria Clayton

I felt like I was hobbling, like one oof the old crones from Act I of Macbeth - God knows my hair felt scraggy enough that I must have looked the part. — P.C. Cast

Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? - Lady Macbeth — William Shakespeare

Macbeth as a whole is awash with questions, sometimes questions responded to by another question, which helps to generate an atmosphere of uncertainty, anxiety and paranoid suspicion. — Terry Eagleton

Macbeth is contending with the realities of this world, Hamlet with those of the next. — Jones Very

Stars are the daisies that begem
The blue fields of the sky. — David Macbeth Moir

Until i die there will be these moments, moments seeming to rise up out of the ground like Macbeth's witches, when his face will come before me, that face in all its changes, when the exact timbre of his voice and tricks of his speech will nearly burst my ears, when his smell will overpower my nostrils. Sometimes, in the days which are coming
God grant me the grace to live them
in the glare of the grey morning, sour-mouthed, eyelids raw and red, hair tangled and damp from my stormy sleep, facing, over coffee and cigarette smoke, last night's impenetrable, meaningless boy who will shortly rise and vanish like the smoke, I will see Giovanni again, as he was that night, so vivid, so winning, all of the
light of that gloomy tunnel trapped around his head. — James Baldwin

Shakespeare villains were extraordinary. Macbeth, Iago, Richard III ... They're so richly layered that a British actor would find it almost impossible to create a two-dimensional villain, if he's explored in his early years or continues to explore his Shakespearean heritage. You can almost not judge them, if they're played really well. — Ben Kingsley

The picture of me is nearly finished, and I think it is magnificent. The green and blue of the dress is splendid, and the expression as Lady Macbeth holds the crown over her head is quite wonderful. — Ellen Terry

In 1975 Australia was producing things like Picnic at Hanging Rock, in other words films that I would consider still some of the finest products to come out of Australia. I think that our quality now is less than it was then. — Ann Macbeth

In the power and splendor of the universe, inspiration waits for the millions to come. Man has only to strive for it. Poems greater than the Iliad, plays greater than Macbeth, stories more engaging than Don Quixote await their seeker and finder. — John Masefield

And those characters [in a fairy tale] dwell in a moral world, whose laws are as clear as the law of gravity. That too is a great advantage of the folk tale. It is not a failure of imagination to see the sky blue. It is a failure rather to be weary of its being blue- and not to notice how blue it is. And appreciation of the subtler colors of the sky will come later. In the folk tale, good is good and evil is evil, and the former will triumph and later will fail. This is not the result of the imaginative quest. It is rather its principle and foundation. It is what will enable the child later on to understand Macbeth, or Don Quixote, or David Copperfield. — Anthony Esolen

Unsex me here and fill me from crown to toe full of direst cruelty That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose. Macbeth — William Shakespeare

I'm the world's lightest sleeper. On a bad day, I can make Lady Macbeth look like a raging narcoleptic. — Jodi Taylor

A sweaty Macbeth with blood on his arms coming in fresh from the battle doesn't interest me. — Alan Cumming

The existing documentary makers still believe that it is impossible to produce drama material in this State, otherwise they would be doing it, they say. — Ann Macbeth

Nought's had, all's spent, where our desire is got without content. — William Shakespeare

You're like Lady Macbeth without the murder." "Thank you. You have no idea how much of a compliment that is to me. — John Corey Whaley

Macbeth is a play that points to the advent, much like the turbulent last century of the Middle Ages, of a modern age gradually deracinated from its Christian grounding and increasingly enamored of a neopagan notion of virtu, of potentially infinite human achievement severed from metaphysical considerations. — William Shakespeare

Stand not upon the order of your going, But go at once."
Macbeth. Act III Sc. 4, Line 119 — Jess Waid

What sad, short lives humans live! Each life a short pamphlet written by an idiot! Tut-tut, and all that. — Stephen King

If it's worth doing, it's worth doing poorly. (friend who is a priest said regarding prayer) — Sybil MacBeth

Look to the lilies how they grow! — David Macbeth Moir

Oh, I like going down the rabbit hole. You know, that's kind of my job. When you play Macbeth, you gotta dive down that one. The trick is figuring out how to do it with love and a sense of humor so you can pop back out again. But, kind of the actor's job is to go down the rabbit hole. — Ethan Hawke

[ ... ] - What are these,
So withered, and so wild in their attire,
That look not like th'inhabitants o'th' earth
And yet are on't? - Live you, or are you aught
That man may question? You seem to understand me,
By each at once her choppy finger laying
Upon her skinny lips. You should be women,
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret
That you are so. — William Shakespeare

The worst thing that you can do in terms of bringing a product up to the market is to be two days after someone else has brought a similar product to the international market-It's dead. — Ann Macbeth

After observing mutations in fruit flies for many years, Professes Goldschmidt fell into despair. The changes, he lamented, were so hopelessly micro [insignificant] that if a thousand mutations were combined in one specimen, there would still be no new species. — Norman Macbeth

Don Quixote is the best book out there on political theory, followed by Hamlet and Macbeth. There is no better way to understand the tragedy and the comedy of the Mexican political system than Hamlet, Macbeth and Don Quixote. They're much better than any column of political analysis. — Subcomandante Marcos Laura Castellanos

All the arts are predominantly national, and therefore the Australian Film Commission should be funding us. The battle gets more and more vicious each year. — Ann Macbeth

And nothing is, but what is not. — William Shakespeare

English
So much to say, so little time.
Miss Wilson kept interrupting our chat with her so-called love of Shakespeare. For
goodness' sake. Hers is not the love that dares not speak its name, hers is the love that bangs on and on about Billy. It's all "What ho, my lord" and "Oh look, here comes MacBeth talking total bollocks. — Louise Rennison

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

I once mentioned in a school report, how a young man in one of our English training colleges having to paraphrase the passage in Macbeth beginning,

Can'st thou not minister to a mind diseased?

turned this line into, "Can you not wait upon the lunatic?" And I remarked what a curious state of things it would be, if every pupil of our national schools knew, let us say, that the moon is two thousand one hundred and sixty miles in diameter, and thought at the same time that a good paraphrase for

Can'st thou not minister to a mind diseased?

was, "Can you not wait upon the lunatic?" If one is driven to choose, I think I would rather have a young person ignorant about the moon's diameter, but aware that "Can you not wait upon the lunatic?" is bad, than a young person whose education had been such as to manage things the other way — Matthew Arnold

To mankind in general Macbeth and Lady Macbeth stand out as the supreme type of all that a host and hostess should not be. — Max Beerbohm

I'm happy for you Agastya,you're leaving for a more meaningful context. This place is like a parody, a complete farce, they're trying to build another Cambridge here. At my old University I used to teach Macbeth to my MA English classes in Hindi.English in India is burlesque. But now you'll get out of here to somehow a more real situation. In my time I'd wanted to give this Civil Service exam too, I should have. Now I spend my time writing papers for obscure journals on L. H. Myers and Wyndham Lewis, and teaching Conrad to a bunch of half-wits. — Upamanyu Chatterjee

My hands are of your colour; but I shame
To wear a heart so white. — William Shakespeare

I think that the BBC's attitude toward the show while it was in production was very similar to that which Macbeth had toward murdering people - initial doubts, followed by cautious enthusiasm and then greater and greater alarm at the sheer scale of the undertaking and still no end in sight. — Douglas Adams

I remember the astonishment I felt when I first read Shakespeare. I expected to receive a powerful esthetic pleasure, but having read, one after the other, works regarded as his best: "King Lear," "Romeo and Juliet," "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," not only did I feel no delight, but I felt an irresistible repulsion and tedium ... Shakespeare can not be recognized either as a great genius, or even as an average author ... far from being the height of perfection, [King Lear] is a very bad, carelessly composed production, ... can not evoke among us anything but aversion and weariness ... All his characters speak, not their own, but always one and the same Shakespearian, pretentious, and unnatural language ... — Leo Tolstoy

I see any production of any nature being good for the development of the whole industry. — Ann Macbeth

You have always had individual directors who begin in the advertising or commercial world, but they are probably exceptions rather than the traditional pattern. — Ann Macbeth

This tune goes manly.
Come, go we to the King. Our power is ready;
Our lack is nothing but our leave. Macbeth
Is ripe for shaking, and the powers above
Put on their instruments. Receive what cheer you may.
The night is long that never finds the day.
They exit. — William Shakespeare

Be not lost So poorly in your thoughts. — William Shakespeare

Shakespeare, who never could think up a plot by himself, found this one [Macbeth] in Holinshed's Chronicles, changing it just enough so that no one would recognize the source. He didn't count on the resourcefulness of modern scholars, who have to discover things like this to become associate professors. — Richard Armour

And I felt comfort. Finally. All I'd wanted for so long was for someone to explain everything that had happened to me in this same way. To label it neatly on a page: this leads to this leads to this. I knew, deep down, it was more complicated than that, but watching Jason, I was hopeful. He took the mess that was Macbeth and fixed it, and I had to wonder if he might, in some small way, be able to do the same for me. So I moved myself closer to him, and I'd been there ever since. — Sarah Dessen

We are here predominantly to support independent filmmakers and their needs. We are also here to assist people actually in their production, non-commercial people in their production. — Ann Macbeth

Macbeth's self-justifications were feeble - and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare's evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Why a should a dream be any less real than this table. Or Macbeth be less real than today's newspaper. — Jorge Luis Borges

The multiplying villainies of nature do swarm upon him ... [from Macbeth] — Alan Moore

I want to play Eva Peron. I've already done a lot of Shakespeare, but I'd like to do Lady Macbeth. — Tamara Tunie

Macbeth was the first play I ever read. — Alan Cumming

We are the only state that does not have a State Film Corporation there to support the commercial industry. — Ann Macbeth

I sometimes have these spells of compulsive truth. But as Lady Macbeth would say, "The fit is momentary." — Ken Kesey

Don't wear green in your dressing room,' suggested Miss Spink.
'Or mention the Scottish play, added Miss Forcible. — Neil Gaiman

Look to the lilies how they grow! 'Twas thus the Saviour said, that we, Even in the simplest flowers that blow, God's ever-watchful care might see. — David Macbeth Moir

When I was 16, I played Macbeth at school and my English teacher said, 'I think you may have acting talent. Try to get into the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain and see where you get.' I wouldn't have thought of that at all. I wanted to be a surgeon, but I wasn't a clever man. — David Suchet

We three just stared. I thought of Macbeth's witches huddled around their cauldron. How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags. What is't you do?
A deed without a name.
We were as quiet as the gravestones around us. — Tessa Gratton

Although she far outranked Hamish, she had to wait patiently, because this was Lochdubh, where Hamish Macbeth was king. — M.C. Beaton

The idea of Macbeth as a conscience-torm ented man is a platitude as false as Macbeth himself. Macbeth has no conscience. His main concern throughout the play is that most selfish of all concerns: to get a good night's sleep. — Mary McCarthy

[Macbeth] is historically set in a place depicted by Shakespeare as brutal and violent, incredibly superstitious, and that's something that I do believe is Scottish. — James McAvoy

If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me. — William Shakespeare

Sometimes I want to have a mental book burning that would scour my mind clean of all the filthy visions literature has conjured there. But how to do without 'The Illiad?' How to do without 'Macbeth?' — Geraldine Brooks

Video just accesses international information so much more readily. — Ann Macbeth

Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?"
Macbeth — William Shakespeare

I'm either the witch or Lady Macbeth of English politics, but someone gotta wear the pants in England when others wearing kilts — Margaret Thatcher

There's husbandry in heaven; Their candles are all out. — William Shakespeare

Film is the most expensive, highest risk industry in the world. — Ann Macbeth

How now! Here's the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.
Lady Macbeth — William Shakespeare

'Macbeth' is an amazing story. — Andy Serkis

Present fears are less than horrible imaginings. — William Shakespeare

We discovered that there was a great deal of keen interest in America for the kinds of products that we thought could be produced here. Also there was an interest in Britain for Australian material generally. — Ann Macbeth

I've never ever read a script. I really must read Macbeth, because I was in it once. I got a lot of laughs in that, I can tell you. — Tom Baker

In the description of night in Macbeth, the beetle and the bat detract from the general idea of darkness - inspissated gloom. — Samuel Johnson

If I could mimic the dynamic of any Shakespearean marriage, I'd choose to mimic the Macbeths - before the murder, ruthless ambition, and torturous descents into madness and death, that is. — Jillian Keenan

Macbeth: How does your patient, doctor?
Doctor: Not so sick, my lord, as she is troubled with thick-coming fancies that keep her from rest.
Macbeth: Cure her of that! 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 her heart.
Doctor: Therein the patient must minister to himself. — William Shakespeare

Indeed the worthy housewife was of such a capricious nature, that she not only attained a higher pitch of genius than Macbeth, in respect of her ability to be wise, amazed, temperate and furious, loyal and neutral in an instant, but would sometimes ring the changes backwards and forwards on all possible moods and flights in one short quarter of an hour; performing, as it were, a kind of triple bob major on the peal of instruments in the female belfry, with a skilfulness and rapidity of execution that astonished all who heard her. — Charles Dickens