Quotes & Sayings About Shakespeare's 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

The very firstlings of my heart shall be The firstlings of my hand. — William Shakespeare

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

What are you doing sister? / Killing swine. — William Shakespeare

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

But wherefore could not I pronounce 'Amen'? I had most need of blessing, and 'Amen' Stuck in my throat. — William Shakespeare

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

My dull brain was wrought with things forgotten. — William Shakespeare

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

The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures. Lady Macbeth — William Shakespeare

That, when they shall be opened, black Macbeth Will seem as pure as snow, and the poor state (55) Esteem him as a lamb, being compared With my confineless harms. — William Shakespeare

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

Turn hell-hound, turn. — William Shakespeare

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

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

Too nice, and yet too true! — William Shakespeare

When our actions do not, our fears make us traitors. — William Shakespeare

Had he not resembled My father as he slept I had done't!
Macbeth — William Shakespeare

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

I think there is this huge hole in Shakespeare that you do not know why Macbeth is who he is. — David Hewson

Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) was a profoundly important analysis of human states of mind - a kind of early philosophical/ psychological study. He sees 'melancholy' as part of the human condition, especially love melancholy and religious melancholy. His concerns are remarkably close to those which Shakespeare explores in his plays. Ambition, for example, Burton describes as 'a proud covetousness or a dry thirst of Honour, a great torture of the mind, composed of envy, pride and covetousness, a gallant madness' - words which could well be applied to Macbeth. — Ronald Carter

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

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

The thing that is so singular and stunning about Macbeth - indeed, it strikes one straightaway - is that all the magic Shakespeare put into writing it manages so entirely to harrow and astonish the soul. — William Shakespeare

I will have thee, as our rarer monsters are, painted upon a pole,and underwrit: Here you may see the tyrant, Macbeth — William Shakespeare

Sawcy, and ouer-bold, how did you dare
To Trade, and Trafficke with Macbeth,
In Riddles, and Affaires of death;
And I the Mistris of your Charmes,
The close contriuer of all harmes,
Was neuer call'd to beare my part,
Or shew the glory of our Art? — William Shakespeare

The essence of Macbeth is seeing a great and intelligent man succumb to the forces of darkness. What gives the tragedy — William Shakespeare

Who was it that thus cried? why? worthy thane, you do unbend your noble strength to think so brainsickly of things.Go get some water and wash this filthy witness from your hand.Why did you bring these daggers from the place?They must lie there. Go carry them and smear the sleepy grooms with blood."
lady macbeth — William Shakespeare

Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return to plague the inventor. — William Shakespeare

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

...he lifted the fat and frightened hawk onto his fist reciting it passages from Hamlet, Macbeth, Richard II, Othello-- 'but tragedy had to be kept out of the voice'-- and all the sonnets he could remember, whistling hymns to it, playing it Gilbert and Sullivan and Italian opera, and deciding, on reflection, that hawks liked Shakespeare best. — Helen Macdonald

Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself And falls on the other side — William Shakespeare

If Shakespeare had to go on an author tour to promote Romeo and Juliet, he never would have written Macbeth. — Joyce Brothers

I have bought golden opinions from all sorts of people. — William Shakespeare

In The Gulag Archipelago, for example, Alexander Solzhenitsyn remarks that Shakespeare's evildoers, Macbeth notably among them, stop short at a mere dozen corpses because they have no ideology. — Theodore Dalrymple

Infected minds to their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets. — William Shakespeare

So fair and foul a day I have not seen. — William Shakespeare

Still it cried 'Sleep no more!' to all the house: 'Glamis hath murder'd sleep, and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more, - Macbeth shall sleep no more! — William Shakespeare

Sleep knits up the raveled sleeve of care. — William Shakespeare

His silver skin laced with his golden blood. — William Shakespeare

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

Everybody needs a career manager."- Lady Macbeth — Robert Lynn Asprin

I drink to the general joy o' the whole table. Macbeth — William Shakespeare

your son has paid the soldier's price: death. He only lived long enough to become a man, and as soon as he proved that he was a man by fighting like one, he died"
Macbeth
William Shakespeare — William Shakespeare

I pray you school yourself. [MacBeth, Act 1V, Scene 2] — William Shakespeare

Go, prick thy face and over-red thy fear,
Thou lily-livered boy. — William Shakespeare

Macbeth to Witches: What are these So wither'd and so wild in their attire, That look not like th' inhabitants o' th' earth, And yet are on 't? — William Shakespeare

At its most basic level, behind the grand poetry and superb characterizations, Shakespeare shows Macbeth succumbing to the temptation of pride, the same sin as Adam. Both wanted to live without God, to lead their own lives, follow their own paths, and ignore any limits on their freedom imposed by God's strictures. — William Shakespeare

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

[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

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

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

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

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

Present fears are less than horrible imaginings. — William Shakespeare

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you think about Shakespeare, you remember Richard III and Macbeth before you remember Ferdinand, whose role is just to fall in love and be a bit of a wimp. I love the baddies. More important, though, is making the baddies somehow, weirdly, understood. — Mark Strong

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

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

[ ... ] - 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

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

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

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

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

Siward: Then he is dead?
Ross: Ay, and brought off the field: your cause of sorrow
Must not be measured by the worth, for then
It hath no end. — William Shakespeare

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

A great perturbation in nature, to receive at once the benefit of sleep and do the effects of watching! — William Shakespeare

And you know, I hate to admit this, but I don't always think in terms of Shakespeare. When I eat, I do. When I'm at a restaurant, I'll think, 'Hmm, what would Macbeth have ordered?' — Liev Schreiber

If the distinction is not held too rigidly nor pressed too far, it is interesting to think of Shakespeare's chief works as either love dramas or power dramas, or a combination of the two. In his Histories, the poet handles the power problem primarily, the love interest being decidedly incidental. In the Comedies, it is the other way around, overwhelmingly in the lighter ones, distinctly in the graver ones, except in Troilus and Cressida
hardly comedy at all
where without full integration something like a balance is maintained. In the Tragedies both interests are important, but Othello is decidedly a love drama and Macbeth as clearly a power drama, while in Hamlet and King Lear the two interests often alternate rather than blend. — Harold Clarke Goddard

Shakespeare without Othello, Lear, Macbeth and Hamlet would be all too much like Hamlet without the prince. — Brand Blanshard

The primary characteristics of the Shakespearean soul present themselves in Macbeth: the soul has free will, reason, conscience, and corporeality. The effect of these beliefs is holistic: they work together, whether a character be virtuous or sinful. More, no character stands alone morally, because Shakespeare assumes, theologically, that the bonds of family and society are sacred. With respect to the individual, however, there is one overarching principle at work. The fall of an individual's soul - the loss of his freedom, the ruin of his reason, the confusion of his conscience, the seduction of his flesh by lies and imagination - is a negation of his soul. — William Shakespeare

Had Shakespeare listened to the news of Duncans death in a tavern or heard the knocking on his own bedroom door after he had finished the writing of Macbeth? — Graham Greene