Read our selection of the most memorable and significant Macbeth quotes. William Shakespeare’s Macbeth is one of his most often quoted plays, with famous quotes aplenty.
As ever, Shakespeare brings his Mabeth characters to life with memorable dialogue and a number of intense monologues and soliloquies. We’ve pulled together all of the top Macbeth quotes below from primary and secondary characters – as well as a good selection from the eponymous hero and his wife – shown in order of the quote appearing in the play, listing the character speaking along with act and scene.
“Fair is foul, and foul is fair.”
Three Witches (Act 1 Scene 1)
“What bloody man is that?”
King Duncan (Act 1 Scene 2)
“If you can look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain will grow and which will not.”
Banquo (Act 1 Scene 3)
“Or have we eaten on the insane root
That takes the reason prisoner?”
Banquo (Act 1 Scene 3)
“What! can the devil speak true?”
Banquo (Act 1 Scene 3)
“Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings.”
King Duncan (Act 1 Scene 4)
“There’s daggers in men’s smiles”
Donalbain (Act 2 Scene 3)
“Double, double toil and trouble:
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.”
Witches (Act 4 Scene 1)
“By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.”
Second Witch (Act 4 Scene 1)
“Macbeth shall never vanquished be until
Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane Hill
Shall come against him.”
Third apparition (Act 4 Scene 1)
“A deed without a name.”
Witches (Act 4 Scene 1)
“When our actions do not,
Our fears do make us traitors.”
Lady Macduff (Act 4 Scene 2)
“Now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.”
Angus (Act 5 Scene 2)
“Tongue nor heart
Cannot conceive nor name thee!”
Macduff (Act 2 Scene 3)
“The patient
Must minister to himself.”
Doctor (Act 5 Scene 3)
“Those clamorous harbingers of blood and death.”
Macduff (Act 5 Scene 6)
…and here are some Macbeth quotes from Macbeth himself:
“Nothing is
But what is not.”
Macbeth (Act 1 Scene 3)
“Come what come may,
Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.”
Macbeth (Act 1 Scene 3)
“False face must hide what the false heart doth know.”
Macbeth (Act 1 Scene 7)
“I dare do all that may become a man;
Who dares do more is none.”
Macbeth (Act 1 Scene 7)
“If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well
It were done quickly.”
Macbeth (Act 1 Scene 7)
“To prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself and falls on th’other”
Macbeth (Act 1 Scene 7)
“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.”
Macbeth (Act 2 Scene 1)
“Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my whereabout”
Macbeth (Act 2 Scene 1)
“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.”
Macbeth (Act 2 Scene 2)
“Methought I heard a voice cry, ‘Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep: the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravelled 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.”
Macbeth (Act 2 Scene 2)
“Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.”
Macbeth (Act 3 Scene 2)
“Blood will have blood.”
Macbeth (Act 3 Scene 4)
“It will have blood, they say: blood will have blood.”
Macbeth (Act 3 Scene 4)
“How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!”
Macbeth (Act 4 Scene 1)
“The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon!
Where gott’st thou that goose look?”
Macbeth (Act 5 Scene 3)
“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.”
Macbeth (Act 5 Scene 5)
“I bear a charmed life.”
Macbeth (Act 5 Scene 8)
Macbeth quotes by Lady Macbeth:
The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements”
“Yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness.”
Lady Macbeth (Act 1, Scene 5)
“Come you spirits, That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here.”
Lady Macbeth (Act 1, Scene 5)
“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 th’ innocent flower,
But be the serpent under ‘t. He that’s coming
Must be provide 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.”
Lady Macbeth (Act 1, Scene 5)
“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 th’ access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
Th’ effect and it. Come to my woman’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring 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 (Act 1, Scene 5)
“Would’st 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 i’ th’ adage?”
Lady Macbeth (Act 1, Scene 7)
“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.”
Lady Macbeth (Act 1, Scene 7)
“I laid their daggers ready;
He could not miss ‘em. Had he not resembled
My father as he slept, I had done’t.”
Lady Macbeth (Act 2, Scene 2)
“Out! damned spot! 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 had so much blood in him.”
Lady Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 1)
“All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.”
Lady Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 1)
“What’s done cannot be undone.”
Lady Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 1)
Are any of your favourite Macbeth quotes missing from this list? Please let us know in the comments below! We also have this list of LadyMacbeth quotes that might be of interest :)
haha we laughed about the egg quote for 20 minutes in class when we learnt macbeth
are you popping bottles, sparkles and champagne?
you forgot ‘look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under’t’.
nah its on there m8 but you jus never read the long quotes
They didn’t i saw it. Macbeth is such an amazing play with so many plot twists. Shakespeare is an amazing playwright
nah bro macbeth is mid but a fitty
I Love the egg quote it reminded me o f eggs
What about ” I am in blood stepts so far that to wade no more would be as tedious as to return over!
this book sucks so much i want to strangle shakespeare when he was a baby so i dont have to be here 700 years later reading on some pure WAFFLE!!