Macbeth Quotes Flashcards
Banquo warns Macbeth early on about the witches
“Be warned…The instruments of darkness tell us truths; win us with honest trifles, only to betray us in deepest consequence”
Macbeth starts regretting his previous actions
“Stars hide your fires; let not light see my black and deep desires”
Lady Macbeth proves to the spirits she’s manly enough to not be a woman
“Come you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here”
Lady Macbeth thinking that the dark night’s can hide her actions
“Come, thick night, and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell”
Lady Macbeth claims if you act innocent when you plead guilty you will get away with your actions.
“Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t”
Macbeth thinks that he is seeing a dagger as his destiny
“Is this a dagger which I see before me? I have thee not yet I see thee still.”
First apparition, possible threat of Macduff
“Beware Macduff!”
Second apparition, comforting Macbeth as every man is born of a woman
“None of woman born shall harm Macbeth”
Third apparition, suggests that Macbeth is safe until the forest outside his castle moves on him.
“Macbeth shall never be vanquished until Great Birnham wood to high Dunsinane Hill comes against him”
Macbeth showing he is arrogant and demanding as proof he has changed.
“Secret, black, and midnight hags!”
Lady Macbeth seeking power from spirits because she see’s Macbeth as too weak.
“Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be What thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness To catch the nearest way.”
Macduff says this when he discovers Duncan has been murdered and compares Duncan’s body to the Lord’s temple, emphasizing the King’s godliness
“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!”
Banquo is suspicious of Macbeth and aware of his actions however Macbeth pretends he doesn’t know of it.
“Thou hast it now: king, Cawdor, Glamis, all, As the weird women promised, and I fear Thou played’st most foully for ‘t.”
Wounded Captain tells Duncan how Macbeth should have died on the battlefield.
“For brave Macbeth - well he deserves that name -
Disdaining fortune, with his brandished steel”.
The King admires his cousin and his battle skills
“O valiant cousin, worthy gentleman!”
The King has made Macbeth Thane of Cawdor.
“What he hath lost noble Macbeth hath won”.
Macbeth says he has not seen a day so good however so evil
“So foul and fair a day I have not seen”
Witches suggesting how everything is not as it seems and all that seems good is actually bad.
“Fair is foul, and foul is fair.”
Lady Macbeth reassuring Macbeth that everything will work out if he fixes his courage firmly in place.
“But screw your courage to the sticking-place,
And we’ll not fail.”
Macbeth tells himself that he must put on a false pleasant face to hide his false, evil heart.
“False face must hide what false heart doth know.”
Lady Macbeth would’ve killed Duncan herself but as he was sleeping he looked like her father.
“Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done’t.”
Macbeth wonders if all of the water in the ocean could wash the blood off his hands.
“Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?”
Lady Macbeth tells Macbeth that washing there hands with water will clear all of the evidence that they killed Duncan
“A little water clears us of this deed.”
Macbeth cannot ask for anything given his sin
“I could not say ‘Amen’”
