Macbeth quotes Flashcards
The witches’ philosophy of life
‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair’
Macbeth killing a rebel
‘unseam’d him from the nave to the chaps’
Banquo’s reaction to witches prophecy about Macbeth becoming Thane becoming true
‘What, can the devil speak true?’
Macbeth wrestling with his thoughts of killing Duncan
‘Let not light see my black and deep desires’
Lady Macbeth’s fear of Macbeth not being bad enough
‘Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full of the milk of human kindness’
Lady Macbeth getting ready to kill Duncan
‘Come you spirits’
‘And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty!’
Macbeth wondering about the consequences of Duncan’s murder
‘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’
Lady Macbeth attacking Macbeth when he says he will not kill Duncan
‘I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums.
And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.’
Lady Macbeth challenging Macbeth
‘But screw your courage to the sticking-place, And we’ll not fail.’
Macbeth praises Lady Macbeth’s manly spirit
‘For thy undaunted mettle should compose
Nothing but males.’
Macbeth’s vision
‘Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand?’
Lady Macbeth reveals a weakness
‘Had he not resembled
My father as he slept, I had done’t.’
Macbeth after murdering King Duncan
‘Macbeth does murder sleep, the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleae of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course.’
Macbeth fearing he cannot get rid of the evidence after hearing a knock at the gate
‘Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand?’
Macbeth says that the King’s dead body impelled him to kill the grooms
‘Here lay Duncan…
‘And his gash’d stabs look’d like a breach in nature
For ruin’s wasteful entrance: there, the murderers,’
Banquo’s reflections of Macbeth’s rise to power
‘I fear thou play’dst most foully for’t
Lady Macbeth finds getting what you want doesn’t bring peace
‘Tis safer to be that which we destroy
Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.’
Macbeth wishes for night and Banquo to die
‘Come, seeling night,…
And with bloody and invisible handd
Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond
Which keeps me pale!’
Macbeth defends his fearful reaction to Banquo’s ghost
‘this is more strange
Than such a murder is.’
Macbeth feels his crime is pursuing him
‘blood will have blood’
Macbeth reflects there is no going back from his evil course
‘I am in blood
Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o’er.’
Witches chant as they await Macbeth
‘Double, double toil and trouble
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.’
Witches predict Macbeth’s arrival
‘Something wicked this way comes’
Macbeth’s deceptive prophecies
‘none of woman born
Shall harm Macbeth.’
‘Great Birnham wood to high Dunsinane hill’
