Macbeth Quotes

Guide Note:Macbeth is a classic tragedy by William Shakespeare.

Fast Facts:

  1. Believed to have been written between 1603 and 1606
  2. Loosely based on Raphael Holinshed's historical account of King Macbeth of Scotland
  3. Published in the First Folio 1623
  4. Shortest of Shakespeare's tragedies (1993 lines)
  5. First performance: April 1611 - Globe Theatre

The Mahalo Top 7

  1. Wikiquote: Macbeth Quotes
  2. SparkNotes: Macbeth - Important Quotations Explained
  3. NovelGuide: Macbeth - Top Ten Quotes
  4. Litquotes: Macbeth Quotes
  5. About: Macbeth Quotes  WARNING: Pop-ups
  6. No Sweat Shakespeare: Modern Language Macbeth Quotes
  7. Literary-Quotations.com: Macbeth Quotes  WARNING: Scroll down to the middle of the page

Macbeth Quotes

  • Lady Macbeth: Out, damned spot! out, I say! (Act 4, Scene 1)
  • Lady Macbeth: What's done cannot be undone. (Act 4, Scene 1)
  • King Duncan: There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face. (Act 1, Scene 4)
  • Macbeth: False face must hide what the false heart doth know. (Act 1, Scene 8)
  • Lady Macbeth: Things without all remedy should be without regard: what's done is done. (Act 3, Scene 2)
  • Lady Macbeth: But screw your courage to the sticking-place, and we'll not fail. (Act 1, Scene 7)
  • Macbeth: Stars, hide your fires! Let not light see my black and deep desires. (Act 1, Scene 4)
  • Lady Macduff: When our actions do not, our fears do make us traitors. (Act 4, Scene 2)
  • Banquo: And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, to betray's in deepest consequence. (Act 1, Scene 1)
  • Lady Macbeth: Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it. (Act 1, Scene 5)
  • Macbeth: If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me. (Act 1, Scene 3)
  • Lady Macbeth: Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o' the milk of human kindness. (Act 1, Scene 5)
  • Malcolm: Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break. (Act 4, Scene 3)
  • Malcolm: Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell. (Act 4, Scene 3)
  • Macbeth: 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'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. (Act 5, Scene 5)

Macbeth Witches Quotes

  • Witches: Fair is foul, and foul is fair. (Act 1, Scene 1)
  • Witches: Double, double toil and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble. (Act 4, Scene 1)
  • Second Witch: By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes. (Act 4, Scene 1)
  • First Witch: Sleep shall neither night nor day hang upon his pent-house lid. (Act 1, Scene 3)
  • Second Witch: Eye of newt, and toe of frog, wool of bat, and tongue of dog. (Act 4, Scene 1)