Macbeth Play Quotes & Sayings

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

Two is not a winner, and three nobody remembers. What does it take to be number one? — Nelly

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

You don't have to be in hurry in life. — Lailah Gifty Akita

I've always wanted to play 'Lady Macbeth' and Strindberg's 'Miss Julie'. — Olivia D'Abo

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

Nature is a book, a letter, a fairy tale (in the philosophical sense) or whatever you want to call it. — Johann Georg Hamann

I had great English teachers in high school who first piqued my interest in Shakespeare. Each year, we read a different play - 'Othello,' 'Julius Caesar,' 'Macbeth,' 'Hamlet' - and I was the nerd in class who would memorize soliloquies just for the fun of it. — Ian Doescher

War is not something that can be won. Everybody loses at war. — Giles Duley

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

I was at a school in England, a prep school, from the ages of 8 and 13. And every play they did was a musical. Parents love musicals. And I don't sing. It was driving me crazy. 'We're doing 'Macbeth.' 'Yes!' 'The musical!' And I was always in the chorus, because of course, in all the main parts, you had to be able to sing. — Charlie Cox

When you are at the right age to play Hamlet you are still to young and immature to play it. It is much later, when you get the life experience and the emotional power, that you understand Hamlet or Macbeth. — Anthony Hopkins

I mean what does a democracy depend on? A democracy depends on the individual voter making an intelligent and rational choice for what he regards as his enlightened self-interest, in any given circumstance. — Aldous Huxley

It must be remembered that the Iliad and Odyssey were composed as epic tales and not as historical texts. To use Shakespeare's Macbeth as a source for 11th-century Scottish politics would rather miss the point of the play, and the same is true of the Homeric epics. — Nic Fields

The desire to belong is partly a desire to lose oneself. — Eric Hoffer

I sometimes wish I had never had to sell a painting. Every painting you make represents the time it was made and how you were feeling and what your influences were ... You are never going to feel that way again, so you can never repeat it ... — Peter Doig

Macbeth is a very popular play with audiences. If you want to sell out a theater, just mount a production of Macbeth. It's a short play, it's an exciting play, it's easy to understand, and it attracts great acting. — Ian McKellen

The love that follows us sometime is our trouble, which still we thank as love. — William Shakespeare

I first came across the script for 'Macbeth' between the ages of 11 and 12; it was the first book that shook my life. Because I did not yet understand that I could simply purchase it in a bookstore, I copied much of it by hand and took it home. My childhood imagination pushed me to feel like a co-author of the play. — Ismail Kadare

Historically, Macbeth is one of the greatest kings Scotland ever had. He was on the throne for 19 years, and he simply has this dreadful reputation because Shakespeare manipulated history for the benefit of James I, who was paying him to write the play to blacken Macbeth's name. — David Hewson

When I die, I want to die in a Utopia that I have helped to build. — Henry Kuttner

Many actors want to play Hamlet and Macbeth. Ever since I became an actor, from the very beginning I just wanted to play a Shetland pony. I cannot explain why — Dustin Hoffman

'Macbeth' was a very lucky play for me. — Ian McKellen

It is also significant that the play opens with the objective presence of supernatural forces. The witches are not the figment of someone else's imagination because there is nobody else present to witness them. They are alone, and therefore they stand alone, utterly independent. We are in the real presence of evil, an evil that really exists whether we like it or not, an evil that is not merely the product of our fetid fetishes or our fevered imaginations. In its formal structure, therefore, Macbeth places us unequivocally in a supernatural cosmos, rendering implausible all materialistic interpretations of the play's intrinsic meaning. — William Shakespeare

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

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

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

Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them.
Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for life. Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer.
Never take the first. Never take the last. Take only what you need.
Take only that which is given.
Never take more than half. Leave some for others. Harvest in a way that minimizes harm.
Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken. Share.
Give thanks for what you have been given.
Give a gift, in reciprocity for what you have taken.
Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever. — Robin Wall Kimmerer

How could a readiness for war in time of peace be safely prohibited, unless we could prohibit, in like manner, the preparations and establishments of every hostile nation? — James Madison

I didn't think anything we did was spectacular. I remember we thought, Let's just write some scary music. — Ozzy Osbourne

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

Heaven's Tao is impartial,
yet those who follow its compassionate way
will always be nourished — Lao-Tzu

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

I read Macbeth as a secondary student in Nigeria and it was like an African play to me. It had all the right elements - witches, kings and assassinations. — Sefi Atta

Why would you train an instrument of destruction? (Jericho) We all choose our destinies. Our birth doesn't dictate our future unless we allow it. (Acheron) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

If I continued to disregard breakup rules, I might as well go all the way. I pushed her curls behind her shoulder and let my fingers linger longer than needed so I could enjoy the silky feel. — Katie McGarry

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

If you look at the play very closely, this is a thirdhand report of what a wonderful hero Macbeth is for saving Scotland. And in the next scene, he's planning to murder Duncan, and you never really know why or what's behind Macbeth. — David Hewson

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

Personally, I don't want to live with limitations. If there comes a time where I am dying to play Juliet or Macbeth, I want to make those avenues for myself. — Danielle Brooks

Thus, Macbeth's nihilism, which will come to bitter and futile fruition in the final act with his dismissal of life as "a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing", is seen to have its roots in the play's opening act with his turning away from fides et ratio toward infidelity and irrationality. — William Shakespeare