• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
MovieQuotesandMore

MovieQuotesandMore

  • Home
  • A-Z Manual
  • Movies
  • Television
  • Lists
  • Reviews
  • Trailers
  • Contact
Home / Best Quotes / The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021) Best Movie Quotes

The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021) Best Movie Quotes

by MovieQuotesandMore.com

FacebookTweetPinLinkedIn

Copyright Notice: It’s easy to see when our selected quotes have been copied and pasted, as you’re also copying our format, mistakes, and movie scene descriptions. If you decide to copy from us please be kind and either link back, or refer back to our site. Please check out our copyright policies here. Thanks!

Starring: Denzel Washington, Frances McDormand, Corey Hawkins, Moses Ingram, Brendan Gleeson, Harry Melling, Ralph Ineson, Brian Thompson, Kathryn Hunter

OUR RATING: ★★★☆☆

Story:

A24 and Apple TV+ period drama written and directed by Joel Coen based on the play of the same name by William Shakespeare. The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021) follows Lord Macbeth (Denzel Washington), who’s convinced by a trio of witches (Kathryn Hunter) that he’s destined to become the king of Scotland. With the help of his ambitious wife, Lady Macbeth (Frances McDormand), he tries to seize the crown by any means necessary.

Read the movie review here.

Our Favorite Quotes:

'Present fears are less than horrible imaginings.' - Macbeth (The Tragedy of Macbeth) Click To Tweet

 

Best Quotes


 

Witches: When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain? When the hurly-burly’s done. When the battle’s lost and won. Where the place? Upon the heath. There to meet with Macbeth. Fair is foul, and foul is fair. Hover through the fog and filthy air.


 

Witches: Weary sennights nine times nine shall he dwindle, peak and pine. The weird sisters, hand in hand. Posters of the sea and land. Thus do go about, about. Thrice to thine and thrice to mine. And thrice again to make up nine.


 

Witches: All hail, Macbeth. That shalt be king hereafter.
Banquo: Are ye fantastical? Or that indeed which outwardly ye show? 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 favor nor your hate.
Witches: Lesser than Macbeth, and greater. Not so happy, yet much happier. Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none.


 

Macbeth: I know I am Thane of Glamis, but how of Cawdor? The Thane of Cawdor lives, a prosperous gentleman. And to be king stands not within the prospect of belief. Say from whence you owe this strange intelligence? Or why upon this blasted heath you stop our way with such prophetic greeting?
Banquo: [as the witches turn and start walking away] The earth hath bubbles, as the water has. And these are of them. Whither are they vanished?
Macbeth: And what seemed corporal melted as breath into the wind. Would they had stayed.


 

Banquo: [as the witches turn into crows and fly away] Were such things here as we do speak about? Or have we eaten on the insane root that takes the reason prisoner?
Macbeth: Your children shall be kings.
Banquo: You shall be king.
Macbeth: And Thane of Cawdor too. Went it not so?
Banquo: To the selfsame tune and words.


 

Angus: We are sent to give thee from our royal master thanks. Only to herald thee into his sight, not pay thee.
Ross: And, for an earnest of a greater honor, he bade me, from him, call thee Thane of Cawdor. In which addition, hail, most worthy Thane. For it is thine.
Banquo: What, can the devil speak true?
Macbeth: If the Thane of Cawdor lives, why do you dress me in borrowed robes?
Ross: Who was the thane lives yet, but under heavy judgment bears that life, which he deserves to lose.


 

Macbeth: This supernatural soliciting cannot be ill, cannot be good. If ill, why hath it given me earnest of success, commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor. If good, why do I yield to that suggestion whose horrid image doth unfix my hair and make my seated heart knock at my ribs, against the use of nature? Present fears are less than horrible imaginings. My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, shakes so my single state of man that function is smothered in surmise, and nothing is, but what is not. If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me without my stir.


 

Macbeth: Come what come may. Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.

 

'There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face.' - Duncan (The Tragedy of Macbeth) Click To Tweet

 

Lady Macbeth: Glamis thou art, and Cawdor. And shalt be what thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature. It is too full of the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great. Art not without ambition, but without the illness should attend it. What thou wouldst highly, that wouldst thou holily. Wouldst not play false, and yet wouldst wrongly win.


 

Duncan: Is execution done on Cawdor?
Malcolm: My liege. I have spoke with one that saw him die, who did report that very frankly he confessed his treasons, implored Your Highness’s pardon, and set forth a deep repentance.
Ross: 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 ’twere a careless trifle.
Duncan: There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face. He was a gentleman on whom I built an absolute trust.


 

Duncan: O worthiest cousin. The sin of my ingratitude even now was heavy on me. Only I have left to say, more is thy due than more than all can pay.
Macbeth: The service and the loyalty I owe, in doing it, pays itself.
Duncan: Welcome hither. I have begun to plant thee and will labor to make thee full of growing.


 

Lady Macbeth: The raven himself is hoarse that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements. Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts. Unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe topful 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.”


 

Lady Macbeth: Thy letters have transported me beyond this ignorant present, and I feel now the future in the instant.
Macbeth: My dearest love.
[they embrace]

 

'Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.' - Macbeth (The Tragedy of Macbeth) Click To Tweet

 

Macbeth: Duncan comes here tonight.
Lady Macbeth: And when goes hence?
Macbeth: Tomorrow, as he purposes.
Lady Macbeth: O, never shall sun that morrow see. 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 it. He that’s coming must be provided for. And you shall put this night’s great business into my dispatch. Which shall to all our nights and days to come give solely sovereign sway and masterdom. Only look up clear. To alter favor ever is to fear. Leave all the rest to me.


 

Duncan: This castle hath a pleasant seat. The air nimbly and sweetly recommends itself unto our gentle senses. This guest of summer, temple-haunting martlet, does approve, by his loved mansionry, that 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: [as Duncan spends the night at their castle] 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 evenhanded justice commends the ingredience of our poisoned chalice to our own lips.


 

Macbeth: He’s here in double trust. First, as I am his kinsman and his subject, strong both against the deed. Then, as his host, who should against his murderer shut the door, not bear the knife myself. 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 newborn babe, striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubim, horsed upon the sightless couriers of the air, shall blow this horrid deed in every eye, that tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, only vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself and falls on the other.


 

Macbeth: How now. What news?
Lady Macbeth: [referring to Duncan] He has almost supped.
Macbeth: Hath he asked for me?
Lady Macbeth: Know you not he has?
Macbeth: We will proceed no further in this business. He hath honored me of late. And I have bought golden opinions from all sorts of people, which would be worn now in their newest gloss, not cast aside so soon.


 

Lady Macbeth: Was the hope drunk wherein you dressed 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. Art thou afeard to be the same in thine own act and valor as thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that which thou esteem’st the ornament of life, and live a coward in thine own esteem, letting “I dare not” wait upon “I would”, like the poor cat in the adage?
Macbeth: Prithee, peace. I dare do all that may become a man. Who dares do more is none.
Lady Macbeth: What beast was’t, then, made you break this enterprise to me? When you durst do it, then you were a man. And, to be more than what you were, you would be so much more the man.

 

'Double, double, toil and trouble. Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.' - Witches (The Tragedy of Macbeth) Click To Tweet

 

Lady Macbeth: 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 dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you have done to this.
Macbeth: If we should fail?
Lady Macbeth: We fail. But screw your courage to the sticking place, and we’ll not fail.


 

Lady Macbeth: When Duncan is asleep, whereto the rather shall his day’s hard journey soundly invite him, his two chamberlains will I with wine and wassail so convince that memory, the warder of the brain, shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason a limbeck only. When in swinish sleep, their drenched natures lie as in a death. What cannot you and I perform upon the unguarded Duncan? What not put upon his spongy officers, who shall bear the guilt of our great quell?
Macbeth: Bring forth men-children only. For thy undaunted mettle should have composed nothing but males.


 

Macbeth: [to Lady Macbeth] I am settled, and bend up each corporal agent to this terrible feat. Away, and mock the time with fairest show. False face must hide what the false heart doth know.


 

Banquo: [to Fleance] There’s husbandry in heaven. Their candles are all out. A heavy summons lies like lead upon me, and yet I would not sleep. Merciful powers, restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature gives way to in repose.


 

Macbeth: [walking towrads Duncan’s room to kill him] 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 a dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? I see thee yet, in form as palpable as this which now I draw. Thou marshal’st me the way that I was going. And such an instrument I was to use. Mine eyes are made the fools o’ the other senses, or else worth all the rest. I see thee still, and on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, which was not so before. There’s no such thing. It is the bloody business that informs thus to mine eyes. Thou sure and firm-set earth, hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear thy very stones prate of my whereabout. 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.


 

Lady Macbeth: [just as we see Macbeth killing Ducnan] It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman, which gives the stern’st good night. He is about it. That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold. What hath quenched them hath given me fire. The doors are open, and the surfeited grooms do mock their charge with snores. I have drugged their possets, that death and nature do contend about them, whether they live or die.


 

Lady Macbeth: I am afraid they have awaked, and ’tis not done. The attempt and not the deed confounds us. Hark. I laid their daggers ready. He could not miss them!

 

'Things without all remedy should be without regard. What's done is done.' - Lady Macbeth (The Tragedy of Macbeth) Click To Tweet

 

Macbeth: Hark. This is a sorry sight.
Lady Macbeth: A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight.
Macbeth: [referring to the Duncan’s servants] There’s one did laugh in his sleep, and one cried, “Murder!” that they did wake each other. I stood and heard them. But they did say their prayers, and addressed them again to sleep.


 

Lady Macbeth: The grooms were lodged together.
Macbeth: One cried, “God bless us,” and, “Amen,” the other, as they had seen me with these hangman’s hands. Listening their fear, I could not say “amen” when they did say, “God bless us.”
Lady Macbeth: Consider it not so deeply.
Macbeth: But wherefore could not I pronounce “amen”? I had most need of blessing, and “amen” stuck in my throat.
Lady Macbeth: These deeds must not be thought after these ways. So, it will make us mad.

See more The Tragedy of Macbeth Quotes


 

Macbeth: Methought I heard a voice cry, “Sleep no more. Macbeth hath murdered sleep.” The innocent sleep. Sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care, the death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, chief nourisher in life’s feast.
Lady Macbeth: What do you mean?
Macbeth: Still it cried, “Sleep no more,” to all the house. “Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more. Macbeth shall sleep no more.”


 

Lady Macbeth: Why did you bring these daggers from the place? They must lie there. Go. Carry them. And smear the sleepy grooms with blood!
Macbeth: I’ll go no more. I’m afraid to think what I have done. Look on’t again I dare not.
Lady Macbeth: Infirm of purpose. Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures. ‘Tis the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil. I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal, for it must seem their guilt. My hands are of your color, but I shame to wear a heart so white.


 

Macbeth: Whence is that knocking? How is it with me, when every noise appalls me? What hands are here? They pluck out mine eyes. 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. To know my deed, ’twere best not know myself. Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst.


 

Porter: Oh, here’s a knocking indeed. If a man were porter of hell-gate, he should have old turning the key. Knock, knock! Who’s there, in the name of Beelzebub? Here’s a farmer, that hanged himself on the expectation of plenty. Come in time. Here you’ll sweat for it.


 

Porter: Knock, knock. Here’s an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale, yet could not equivocate to heaven. O, come in, equivocator. Knock, knock. Who’s there? O, here’s an English tailor, come hither for stealing out of a French hose. Come in, tailor. Here you may roast your goose.


 

Porter: Knock, knock. Never at quiet. O, but this place is too cold for hell. I’ll devil-porter it no further. Anon!


 

Macduff: Was it so late, friend, ere you went to bed, that you do lie so late?
Porter: Faith, sir, we were carousing till the second cock. And drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things.
Macduff: What three things?
Porter: Nose-painting, sleep and urine. Ooh! Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes. It provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance. Therefore, much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery. It makes him, and it mars him. It sets him on, and it takes him off. It persuades him, disheartens him, makes him stand to, and not stand to. In conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him.
Macduff: I believe drink gave thee the lie last night.


 

Lennox: The night has been unruly. Where we lay, our chimneys were blown down. And, as they say, lamentings heard in the air. Strange screams of death and prophesying, with accents terrible, of dire combustion and confused events new hatched to the woeful time. And the obscure bird, clamored the livelong night. Some say, the earth was feverous and did shake.
Macbeth: ‘Twas a rough night.


 

Macduff: [as he discovers Duncan] Horror! Horror! Horror! Tongue nor heart cannot conceive nor name thee.
Lennox: What’s the matter?
Macduff: Confusion now hath made his masterpiece. Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope the Lord’s anointed temple, and stole thence the life of the building.


 

Macbeth: [as he kills Duncan’s servants] Had I but died an hour before this chance, I had lived a blessed time. For, from this instant, there’s nothing serious in mortality. All is but toys. Renown and grace is dead. The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees is left this vault to brag of.


 

Malcolm: Why do we hold our tongues, that most may claim this argument for ours?
Donalbain: Let’s away. Our tears are not yet brewed.
Malcolm: Let’s not consort with them. To show an unfelt sorrow is an office which the false man does easy. I’ll to England.
Donalbain: To Ireland, I. Our separated fortune shall keep us both the safer. Where we are, there’s daggers in men’s smiles. The near in blood, the nearer bloody.
Malcolm: This murderous shaft that’s shot hath not yet lighted. And our safest way is to avoid the aim. Therefore, to horse. And let us not be dainty of leave-taking.


 

Ross: Good father. Thou seest the heavens, as troubled with man’s act, threatens the bloody stage. By the clock, ’tis day, and yet dark night strangles the traveling lamp. Is’t night’s predominance, or the day’s shame, that darkness does the face of earth entomb, when living light should kiss it?
Old Man: ‘Tis unnatural, even like the deed that’s done. On Tuesday last, a falcon, towering in her pride of place, was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed. And Duncan’s horses, a thing most strange and certain, beauteous and swift, the minions of their race, turned wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out, contending ‘gainst obedience, as they would make war with mankind. ‘Tis said they ate each other.


 

Banquo: Thou hast it now. King, Cawdor, Glamis, all. As the weird women promised. And, I fear, thou play’dst most foully for it. Yet it was said it should not stand in thy posterity, but that myself should be the root and father of many kings. If there come truth from them, as upon thee, Macbeth, their speeches shine, why, by the verities on thee made good, may they not be my oracles as well, and set me up in hope? But hush. No more.


 

Macbeth: [as Macbeth assumes the throne] Is it far you ride?
Banquo: As far, my lord, as will fill up the time ‘twixt this and supper. Go not my horse the better, I must become a borrower of the night for a dark hour or twain.
Macbeth: Fail not our feast.
Banquo: My lord, I will not.


 

Murderer #1: [as Macbeth plans for Banquo and Fleances to be killed] We shall, my lord, perform what you command us.
Murderer #2: Though our lives…
Macbeth: Your spirits shine through you. It must be done tonight, and something from the palace. Always thought that I require a clearness. And with him, to leave no rubs nor botches in the work, Fleance, his son, must embrace the fate of that dark hour.
Murderer #1: We are resolved, my lord.
Macbeth: Resolve yourselves apart.


 

Lady Macbeth: How now, my lord. Why do you keep alone, of sorriest fancies your companions making, using those thoughts which should indeed have died with them they think on? Things without all remedy should be without regard. What’s done is done.
Macbeth: We have scorched the snake, not killed it. She’ll close and be herself, whilst our poor malice remains in danger of her former tooth. Better be with the dead, whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace, than on the torture of the mind to lie in restless ecstasy.


 

Macbeth: 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.
Lady Macbeth: Come on. Gentle my lord, sleek o’er your rugged looks. Be bright and jovial among your guests tonight.
Macbeth: O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife.


 

Macbeth: Thou knowest that Banquo, and his Fleance, lives. And in his royalty of nature reigns that which would be feared. ‘Tis much he dares. And, to that dauntless temper of his mind, he hath a wisdom that guide his valor to act in safety. There’s none but he whose being I do fear.
Lady Macbeth: You must leave this.


 

Macbeth: He chid the sisters when first they put the name of king upon me, and bade them speak to him. Then prophet-like they hailed him father to a line of kings. Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown, put a barren scepter in my grip, thence to be wrenched with an unlineal hand. No son of mine succeeding. If’t be so, for Banquo’s issue have I filed my mind. For them the gracious Duncan have I murdered. Put rancors in the vessels of my peace only for them. And mine eternal jewel given to the common enemy of man, to make them kings!


 

Macbeth: 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.


 

Lady Macbeth: What’s to be done?
Macbeth: Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, till thou applaud the deed. 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, as night’s black agents to their prey do rouse. Thou marvel’st at my words. But hold thee still. Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.


 

Lady Macbeth: My royal lord, you do not give the cheer.
Macbeth: Sweet remembrancer. Now, good digestion wait on appetite, and health…
Lady Macbeth: On both.


 

Lennox: What is’t that moves Your Highness?
Macbeth: Which of you have done this?
Lennox: What, my good lord?
Macbeth: Thou canst not say I did it. Never shake thy gory locks at me!


 

Lady Macbeth: Are you a man?
Macbeth: Aye, and a bold one, that dare look upon that which might appall the devil.
Lady Macbeth: This is the very painting of thy fear. This is the air-drawn dagger which, you said, led you to Duncan.
Macbeth: If I stand here, I saw him!
Lady Macbeth: Fie, for shame.
Macbeth: [as he’s hallucinating] The time has been, that, when the brains were out, the man would die, and there an end! But now they rise again, with twenty mortal murders on their crowns, and push us to our stools! This is more strange than such a murder is! Avaunt! Quit my sight! Thy bones are marrowless! Thy blood is cold! Thou hast no speculation in those eyes. Hence, horrible shadow! Unreal mockery, hence!


 

Macbeth: I am a man again. Do not muse at me, my most worthy friends. I have a strange infirmity, which is nothing to those that know me.
Lady Macbeth: You have displaced the mirth, broke the good meeting, with most admired disorder.
Macbeth: Can such things be and overcome us like a summer’s cloud, without our special wonder? You make me strange, even to the disposition that I owe, when now I think you can behold such sights, and keep the natural ruby of your cheeks, when mine are blanched with fear.
Lennox: What sights, my lord?
Lady Macbeth: I pray you, speak not. He grows worse and worse. Question enrages him. At once, good night. Stand not upon the order of your going, but go at once.


 

Macbeth: It will have blood. They say blood will have blood. Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak. Augurs and understood relations have by the magpies and crows and rooks brought forth the secret’st man of blood. What is the night?
Lady Macbeth: Almost at odds with morning, which is which.


 

Macbeth: How sayest thou, that Macduff denies his person at our great bidding?
Lady Macbeth: Did you send to him, sir?
Macbeth: I hear it by the way. But I will send. There’s not a one of them but in his house I keep a servant feed. I will tomorrow unto the weird sisters. More shall they speak. I am in blood stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er.


 

Macbeth: Strange things I have in head, that will to hand. Which must be acted, ere they be scanned.
Lady Macbeth: You lack the season of all natures, sleep.
Macbeth: Come, we’ll to sleep. My strange and self-abuse is the initiate fear that wants hard use. We are yet but young in deed.


 

Witches: By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.
Macbeth: How now, you secret, black and midnight hags. What is’t you do?
Witches: A deed without a name.
Macbeth: I conjure you, by that which you profess, howe’er you come to know it, answer me. Even till destruction sicken, answer me to what I ask you.


 

Witches: Speak. Demand. We’ll answer. Say if thou’dst rather hear it from our mouths, or from our masters?
Macbeth: Call them. Let me see them.
Witches: Double, double, toil and trouble. Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.


 

Fleance: [as the witches conjure up a vision of Fleance] Macbeth. Macbeth. Macbeth. Beware Macduff. Beware the Thane of Fife.


 

Fleance: Macbeth. Macbeth. Macbeth.
Macbeth: Had I three ears, I’d hear thee.
Fleance: Be bloody, bold, and resolute. Laugh to scorn the power of man, for none of woman born shall harm Macbeth.
Macbeth: Then live, Macduff. What need I fear of thee? Yet I will make assurance double sure, and take a bond of fate. Thou shalt not live. That I might tell pale-hearted fear it lies, and sleep in spite of thunder. But what is this that rises like the issue of a king, and wears upon his baby-brow the round and top of sovereignty?


 

Fleance: Macbeth shall never vanquished be until great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill shall come against him.
Macbeth: That will never be. Who can impress the forest, bid the tree unfix his earthbound root? Yet my heart throbs to know one thing more. Tell me, if your art can tell so much. Shall Banquo’s issue ever reign in this kingdom?
Witches: Seek to know no more. Seek to know no more.


 

Lady Macduff: What had he done, to make him fly the land?
Ross: You must have patience, madam.
Lady Macduff: He had none. His flight was madness. When our actions do not, our fears do make us traitors.
Ross: You know not whether it was his wisdom or his fear.
Lady Macduff: Wisdom! To leave his wife, to leave his babes, his mansion and his titles in a place from whence himself does fly? He loves us not. He wants the natural touch.


 

Macduff’s Son: Was my father a traitor, Mother?
Lady Macduff: Aye, that he was.
Macduff’s Son: What is a traitor?
Lady Macduff: Why, one that swears and lies.
Macduff’s Son: And be all traitors that do so?
Lady Macduff: Every one that does so is a traitor, and must be hanged.
Macduff’s Son: Who must hang them?
Lady Macduff: Why, the honest men.
Macduff’s Son: Then the liars and swearers are fools, for there are liars and swearers enough to beat the honest men and hang up them.


 

Malcolm: [after being told that Macduff’s household has been killed] Merciful heaven. What, man? Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.
Macduff: My children too?
Ross: Wife, children, servants, all that could be found.
Macduff: My wife killed too?
Ross: I have said.


 

Malcolm: Be comforted. Let’s make us medicines of our great revenge, to cure this deadly grief.
Macduff: He has no children! All my pretty ones? Did you say all? O hellkite. All? What, all my pretty chickens and their dam in one fell swoop?
Malcolm: Dispute it like a man.
Macduff: I shall do so! But I must also feel it as a man. I cannot but remember such things were, that were most precious to me. Did heaven look on, and would not take their part?


 

Macduff: Sinful Macduff. They were all struck for thee. Naught that I am, not for their own demerits, but for mine, fell slaughter on their souls. Heaven rest them now.
Malcolm: Be this the whetstone of your sword. Let grief convert to anger. Blunt not the heart, enrage it.
Macduff: O, I could play the woman with mine eyes and braggart with my tongue. But, gentle heavens, cut short all intermission.


 

Lady Macbeth: [as she’s descending into madness] Out, damned spot. Out, I say. One. two. Why, then, ’tis time to do it. 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 had so much blood in him? The Thane of Fife had a wife. Where is she now?!


 

Lady Macbeth: Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.


 

Doctor: [referring to Lady Macbeth] Foul whisperings are abroad. Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles. Infected minds to their deaf pillows do discharge their secrets. More needs she the divine than the physician.


 

Lady Macbeth: Come, come. Give me your hand. What’s done cannot be undone.


 

Monteith: What wood is this before us?
Angus: The wood of Birnam. The English power is near, led on by Malcolm, his cousin Siward and the good Macduff. Revenges burn in them.
Monteith: What does the tyrant?
Angus: Great Dunsinane he strongly fortifies. Some say he’s mad. Others that lesser hate him do call it valiant fury. But, for certain, he cannot buckle his distempered cause within the belt of rule.
Monteith: Now does he feel his secret murders sticking on his hands. 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.


 

Macbeth: The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon! Where got’st thou that goose look?


 

Macbeth: I have lived long enough. My way of life is fallen 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.


 

Macbeth: How does your patient, doctor?
Doctor: Not so sick, my lord, as she is troubled with thick-coming fancies that keep her from her 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 the heart?
Doctor: Therein the patient must minister to himself.
Macbeth: Throw physic to the dogs! I’ll none of it!


 

Siward: We learn no other but the confident tyrant keeps still in Dunsinane, and will endure our setting down before it.
Malcolm: ‘Tis his main hope. And none serve with him but constrained things whose hearts are absent too.


 

Macbeth: Hang out our banners on the outward walls! The cry is still, “They come!”


 

Macbeth: Were they not forced with those that should be ours, we might have met them areful, beard to beard, and beat them backward home.


 

Malcolm: Now near enough! Your leafy screens throw down. And show like those you are!
Macduff: Make all our trumpets speak. Give them all breath, those clamorous harbingers of blood and death!


 

Macbeth: What is that noise?
Seyton: It is the cry of women, my good lord.
Macbeth: 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 if life were in’t.


 

Seyton: The queen, my lord, is dead.
Macbeth: She should have died hereafter. There would have been a time for such a word. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, 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 is 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.


 

Macduff: Turn, hellhound, turn!
Macbeth: Of all men else I have avoided thee. But get thee back. My soul is too much charged with blood of thine already.
Macduff: I have no words. My voice is in my sword.
Macbeth: Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests. I bear a charmed life, which must not yield, to one of woman born.
Macduff: Despair thy charm. And let the angel whom thou still hast served tell thee, Macduff was from his mother’s womb untimely ripped.
Macbeth: Accursed be thy tongue that tells me so.


 

Macbeth: I will not fight with thee.
Macduff: Then yield thee, coward!
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 not of woman born, yet I will try the last. Lay on, Macduff. And damned be him that first cries, “Hold, enough!
[they fight, and as Macbeth’s crown falls, as he goes to place it back on his head, Macduff beheads him, then Malcolm becomes king and we see Fleance is alive]

 


 

Trailer:



Pages: Page 1 Page 2

Filed Under: Best Quotes

Primary Sidebar

Looking for Something?

Lists

Copyright © 2023 | All Rights Reserved | All images are copyright of their respective owners | Stock images by Depositphotos

  • About
  • Contact
  • Site Policies
  • Blog
  • Twitter
  • Facebook