Macbeth quotes tell a compelling tale of ambition, power, guilt, and downfall.
Shakespeare’s play centers around Macbeth, a valiant Scottish general whose prophecy foretells him as the future King.
This fills him with a burning ambition that, fueled by his wife’s machinations, leads him to commit regicide.
This act triggers tragic events, including deceit, paranoia, and murders.
As Macbeth spirals into madness and despair under the weight of his brutal deeds, the inevitable reckoning approaches, leading to his tragic fall, exemplifying the destructive potential of unchecked ambition and power.
Macbeth Quotes With Page Numbers Act 1
“Where shall we three meet again in thunder, lightning, or in rain? When the hurlyburly ‘s done, when the battle ‘s lost and won”
~Willam Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Characters: First Witch), Act 1, Scene 1, Page 7
“Fair is foul, and foul is fair, hover through fog and filthy air.”
~Willam Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Characters: All), Act 1, Scene 7, Page 7
“So foul and fair a day I have not seen.”
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Macbeth), Act 1, Scene 3, Page 17
“If you can look into the seeds of time And say which grain will grow and which will not, Speak, then, to me, who neither beg nor fear Your favors nor your hate.”
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Banquo), Act 1, Scene 3, Page 17
“Come what come may, time and the hour run through the roughest day.”
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Macbeth), Act 1, Scene 3, Page 25
“Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.”
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Macbeth), Act 1, Scene 4, Page 27
“Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires.”
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth,(Character: Macbeth), Act 1, Scene 4, Page 29
“The love that follows us sometime is our trouble, which still we thank as love.”
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Duncan), Act 1, Scene 5, Page 32
“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, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature’s mischief! 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!”~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Lady Macbeth), Act 1, Scene 5, Page 33
“Look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under it.”~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Lady Macbeth), Act 1, Scene 5, Page 35
“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, Macbeth, (Character: Lady Macbeth), Act 1, Scene 1, Page 35
“I dare do all that may become a man;
Who dares do more, is none.”~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Macbeth), Act 1, Scene 7, Page 41
“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, Macbeth, (Character: Macbeth), Act 1, Scene 7, Page 41
“Macbeth:
If we should fail?
Lady Macbeth:
We fail?
But screw your courage to the sticking place,
And we’ll not fail.”~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Characters: Macbeth and Lady Macbeth), Act 1, Scene 7, Page 43
“Screw your courage to the sticking place and we will not fail.”
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Lady Macbeth), Act 1, Scene 7, Page 43
“False face must hide what the false heart doth know.”
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth,(Character: Macbeth), Act 1, Scene 7, Page 44
Macbeth Act 2 Quotes
“I go and it is done. The bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven or to hell.”
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Macbeth), Act 2, Scene 1, Page 53
“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, Macbeth, (Character: Macbeth), Act 2, Scene 2, Page 57
“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, Macbeth, (Character: Macbeth), Act 2, Scene 2, Page 57
“My hands are of your color, but I shame to wear a heart so white.”
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Lady Macbeth), Act 2, Scene 2, Page 59
“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.”
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Macbeth), Act 2, Scene 2, Page 59
“A little water clears us of this deed.”
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Lady Macbeth), Act 2, Scene 2, Page 59
“it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance.”
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Porter), Act 2, Scene 3, Page 63
“Confusion now hath made his masterpiece.”
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Macduff), Act 2, Scene 3, Page 65
“There’s nothing serious in Mortality”
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Macbeth), Act 2, Scene 3, Page 69
“Who could refrain,
That had a heart to love, and in that heart
Courage to make love known?”~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Macbeth), Act 2, Scene 3, Page 70
Macbeth Act 3 Quotes
“Let every man be master of his time.”
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Macbeth), Act 3, Scene 1, Page 83
“Tis safter to be that which we destroy
Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.”~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Lady Macbeth), Act 3, Scene 2, Page 91
“What’s done, is done”
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Lady Macbeth), Act 3, Scene 2, Page 93
“Things without all remedy should be without regard: what’s done is done.”
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Lady Macbeth), Act 3, Scene 2, Page 93
“O, full of scorpions is my mind!”
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Macbeth), Act 3, Scene 2, Page 93
“I drink to the general joy o’ the whole table.” Macbeth”
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Macbeth), Act 3, Scene 4, Page 105
“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.”~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Macbeth), Act 3, Scene 4, Page 109
“Blood will have blood.”
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Macbeth), Act 3, Scene 4, Page 109
“He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear
His hopes ‘bove wisdom, grace and fear:
And you all know, security
Is mortals’ chiefest enemy.”~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Hecate), Act 3, Scene 5, Page 111
Macbeth Act 4 Quotes
“Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble!”~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Characters: All), Act 4, Scene I, Page 120 (first appearance)
“By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.”~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Second Witch), Act 4, Scene I, Page 123
“Something wicked this way comes”
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Second Witch), Act 4, Scene 1, Page 123
“Be bloody bold and resolute.”
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Second Apparition), Act 4, Scene 1, Page 125
“What, you egg? [stabs him]”
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: First Murderer), Act 4, Scene 2, Page 139
“Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.
Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace,
Yet Grace must still look so.”~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Malcolm), Act 4, Scene 4, Page 141
“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.”
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character; Malcolm) Act 4, Scene 3, Page 155
“The grief that does not speak whispers the o’erfraught heart and bids it break.”
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Malcolm), Act 4, Scene 3, Page 155
“Receive what cheer you may. The night is long that never finds the day.”
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Macbeth), Act 4, Scene 3, Page 157
Macbeth Act 5 Quotes
“Out, damned spot! out, I say!—One, two; why, then ‘tis time to do’t.—Hell is murky!—Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?—Yet who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him? The thane of Fife had a wife; where is she now?—What, will these hands ne’er be clean?—No more o’that, my lord, no more o’that: you mar all with this starting. Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!”
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Lady Macbeth), Act 5, Scene 1, Page 163
“What’s done cannot be undone.”
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Lady Macbeth), Act 5, Scene 1, Page 164
“Unnatural deeds
Do breed unnatural troubles: infected minds
To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets”~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Doctor), Act 5, Scene 2, Page 165
“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, (Characters: Macbeth and the Doctor), Act 5, Scene 3, Page 171
“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.”~William Shakespeare, Macbeth,(Character: Macbeth), Act 5, Scene 5, Page 177
“Your cause of sorrow must not be measured by his worth, for then it hath no end.”
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Character: Ross), Act 5, Scene 8, Page 189
What is Macbeth’s famous quote?
“I dare do all that may become a man;
Who dares do more, is none.”~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, (Macbeth), Act 1, Scene 7, Page 41