Macbeth Quotations Exam Flashcards
“And though I could with barefaced power sweep him from my sight and bid my will avouch it, yet I must not, for certain friends that are both his and mine, whose loves I may not drop, but wail his fall who I myself struck down.” (Speaker, audience, context)
Reasons for
“Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn the power of man, for none of woman born shall harm Macbeth.” (Speaker, audience, context)
“Be lion-mettled, proud; and take no care who chafes, who frets, or where conspirers are: Macbeth shall never vanquish’d be until Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill shall come against him” (Speaker, audience, context)
“But ‘tis strange. And oftentimes, to win us to our harms, the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles to betray ’s in deepest consequence.” (Speaker, audience, context)
“Come, thick night, and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, that my keen knife see not the wound it makes, or heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, to cry, ‘Hold, hold.’” (Speaker, audience, context)
“Confusion now hath made his masterpiece: most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope the Lord’s anointed temple, and stole thence the life o ‘th ‘building. Approach the chamber and destroy your sight with a new Gorgon. Do not bid me speak; see and then speak yourselves.” (Speaker, audience, context)
“Despair thy charm, and let the angel whom thou hast served tell thee Macduff was from his mother’s womb untimely ripped.” (Speaker, audience, context)
“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.” (Speaker, audience, context)
“From this moment, the very firstlings of my heart shall be the firstlings of my hand. And even now to crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought and done.” (Speaker, audience, context)
“Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done’t.” (Speaker, audience, context)
“Here’s the smell of the blood still; all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. O, O, O!” (Speaker, audience, context)
“I am in blood stepp’d in so far that should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er. Strange things I have in head that will to hand, which must be acted ere they may be scann’d. We are yet but young in deed.” (Speaker, audience, context)
“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.” (Speaker, audience, context)
“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 but 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 marshall’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.” (Speaker, audience, context)
“I will tomorrow (and betimes I will) to the Weird Sisters. More shall they speak, for now I am bent to know by the worst means the worst. For mine own good, all causes shall give way.” (Speaker, audience, context)
“Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth! beware Macduff; beware the thane of Fife. Dismiss me. Enough.” (Speaker, audience, context)
“My hands are of your colour, but I shame to wear a heart so white. A little water clears us of this deed. How easy is it then! Your constancy hath left you unattended.” (Speaker, audience, context)
“Nought’s had, all’s spent where our desire is got without content. ‘Tis safer to be that which we destroy than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.” (Speaker, audience, context)
“Of all men else I have avoided thee. But get thee back. My soul is too much charged with blood of thine already.” (Speaker, audience, context)
“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 had so much blood in him.” (Speaker, audience, context)
“She should have died hereafter. There would have been a time for such a word. 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.”
“The castle of MacDuff I will surprise; seize upon Fife; give to th ’edge o’ th’ sword, his wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls that trace him in his line.”
“The Prince of Cumberland! That is a step on which I must fall down or else o’erleap, for in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires; let not light see my black and deep desires. The eye wink at the hand, yet let that be, which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.”
“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 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.”
“The thane of Cawdor lives: why do you dress me in borrow’d robes?”
“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.”
“Thou canst not say I did it. Never shake thy gory locks at me.”
“What hands are here? Ha, they pluck out mine eyes. Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood from my hand? No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red.”
“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.”
“’Tis unnatural, even like the deed that’s done. On Tuesday last, a falcon tow’ring in her pride of place, was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed.”
