MACBETH: Two truths are told,
As happy prologues to the swelling act
Of the imperial theme.
Macbeth, I, iii
MACBETH: This supernatural soliciting
Cannot be ill, cannot be good.
Macbeth, I, iii
MACBETH: If good, why do I yield to that
suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature?
Macbeth, I, iii
MACBETH: My thought, whose murder yet is but
fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man that function
Is smother'd in surmise, and nothing is
But what is not.
Macbeth, I, iii
MACBETH: If chance will have me king, why,
chance may crown me,
Without my stir.
Macbeth, I, iii
BANQUO: New honors come upon him,
Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould
But with the aid of use.
Macbeth, I, iii
MACBETH: Come what come may,
Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.
Macbeth, I, iii
MACBETH: Give me your favour: my dull brain
was wrought
With things forgotten.
Macbeth, I, iii
MALCOLM: Nothing in his life
Became him like the leaving it.
Macbeth, I, iv
MALCOLM: He died
As one that had been studied in his death
To throw away the dearest thing he owed,
As 'twere a careless trifle.
Macbeth, I, iv
DUNCAN: There's no art
To find the mind's construction in the face:
He was a gentleman on whom I built
An absolute trust.
Macbeth, I, iv
MACBETH: Stars, hide your fires;
Let not light see my black and deep desires:
Macbeth, I, iv
MACBETH: The eye wink at the hand; yet let
that be,
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.
Macbeth, I, iv
LADY MACBETH: Yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full o' the milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way.
Macbeth, I, v
LADY MACBETH: The raven himself is
hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements.
Macbeth, I, v
LADY MACBETH: 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!
Macbeth, I, v
LADY MACBETH: Your face, my thane, is as a
book where men
May read strange matters.
Macbeth, I, v
LADY MACBETH: 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.
Macbeth, I, v
MACBETH: If it were done when 'tis done, then
'twere well
It were done quickly.
Macbeth, I, vii
MACBETH: ... that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here.
Macbeth, I, vii
MACBETH: But in these cases
We still have judgment here, that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor.
Macbeth, I, vii
MACBETH: Besides, this Duncan
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off.
Macbeth, I, vii
LADY MACBETH: Art thou afeard
To be the same in thine own act and valour
As thou art in desire?
Macbeth, I, vii
MACBETH: I dare do all that may become a
man;
Who dares do more is none.
Macbeth, I, vii
LADY MACBETH: We fail?
But screw your courage to the sticking-place,
And we'll not fail.
Macbeth, I, vii
LADY MACBETH: Soundly invite him--his two
chamberlains
Will I with wine and wassail so convince
That memory, the warder of the brain,
Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason
A limbeck only ...
Macbeth, I, vii
LADY MACBETH: When in swinish sleep
Their drenched natures lie as in a death ...
Macbeth, I, vii
LADY MACBETH: Away, and mock the time with
fairest show:
False face must hide what the false heart doth know.
Macbeth, I, vii
BANQUO: There's husbandry in heaven;
Their candles are all out.
Macbeth, II, i
BANQUO: A heavy summons lies like lead upon
me,
And yet I would not sleep. Merciful powers,
Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature
Gives way to in repose!
Macbeth, II, i
MACBETH: Is this a dagger which I see before
me,
The handle toward my hand?
Macbeth, II, i
MACBETH: 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?
Macbeth, II, i
MACBETH: Thou marshall'st me the way that I
was going;
And such an instrument I was to use.
Macbeth, II, i
MACBETH: Now o'er the one half world
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtain'd sleep; witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate's offerings, and wither'd murder,
Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace.
With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost.
Macbeth, II, i
MACBETH: Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it.
Macbeth, II, i
MACBETH: Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.
Macbeth, II, i
MACBETH: 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.
Macbeth, II, i
LADY MACBETH: That which hath made them drunk
hath made me bold;
What hath quench'd them hath given me fire.
Macbeth, II, ii
MACBETH: Methought I heard a voice cry "Sleep
no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep", the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast,--
Macbeth, II, ii
MACBETH: I am afraid to think what I have
done;
Look on't again I dare not.
Macbeth, II, ii
LADY MACBETH: The sleeping and the dead
Are but as pictures.
Macbeth, II, ii
LADY MACBETH: 'Tis the eye of childhood
That fears a painted devil.
Macbeth, II, ii
MACBETH: 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, II, ii
LADY MACBETH: A little water clears us of this
deed:
How easy is it, then!
Macbeth, II, ii
PORTER: Who's there, in the other devil's name? Faith, here's an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven: O, come in, equivocator.
Macbeth, II, iii
PORTER: But this place is too cold for hell. I'll devil-porter it no further: I had thought to have let in some of all professions that go the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire.
Macbeth, II, iii
PORTER: 'Faith sir, we were carousing till the second cock: and drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things.
MACDUFF: What three things does drink especially provoke?
PORTER: Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine.
Macbeth, II, iii
PORTER: Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes; it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance: therefore, much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery: it makes him, and it mars him; it sets him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him, and disheartens him; makes him stand to, and not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him.
Macbeth, II, iii
MACBETH: The labour we delight in physics pain.
Macbeth, II, iii
LENNOX: The night has been unruly: where we
lay,
Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say,
Lamentings heard i' the air; strange screams of death,
And prophesying with accents terrible
Of dire combustion and confused events
New hatch'd to the woeful time: the obscure bird
Clamour'd the livelong night: some say, the earth
Was feverous and did shake.
MACBETH: 'Twas a rough night.
Macbeth, II, iii
MACBETH: Had I but died an hour before this
chance,
I had lived a blessed time; for, from this instant,
There 's nothing serious in mortality:
All is but toys: renown and grace is dead;
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
Is left this vault to brag of.
Macbeth, II, iii
DONALBAIN: Where we are,
There's daggers in men's smiles: the nea'er in blood,
The nearer bloody.
Macbeth, II, iii
ROSS: By the clock, 'tis day,
And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp.
Macbeth, II, iv
ROSS: Is't night's predominance, or the day's
shame,
That darkness does the face of earth entomb,
When living light should kiss it?
Macbeth, II, iv
OLD MAN: 'Tis unnatural,
Even like the deed that's done. On Tuesday last,
A falcon, towering in her pride of place,
Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and kill'd.
Macbeth, II, iv
ROSS: And Duncan's horses -- a thing most
strange and certain --
Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race,
Turn'd wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out,
Contending 'gainst obedience, as they would make
War with mankind.
OLD MAN: 'Tis said they eat each other.
Macbeth, II, iv
OLD MAN: God's benison go with you; and with
those
That would make good of bad, and friends of foes!
Macbeth, II, iv
BANQUO: Thou hast it now: king, Cawdor,
Glamis, all,
As the weird women promised, and, I fear,
Thou play'dst most foully for't.
Macbeth, III, i
FIRST MURDERER: We are men, my liege.
MACBETH: Ay, in the catalogue ye go for
men;
As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,
Shoughs, water-rugs and demi-wolves, are clept
All by the name of dogs: the valued file
Distinguishes the swift, the slow, the subtle,
The housekeeper, the hunter, every one
According to the gift which bounteous nature
Hath in him closed; whereby he does receive
Particular addition from the bill
That writes them all alike: and so of men.
Macbeth, III, i