The new film version of the Shakespearean classic (which is now available to stream on Apple TV as of Friday, Jan. 14, 2022) was apparently Coen’s wife’s idea; Oscar winner Frances McDormandkept urging him to do it, somewhat bringing out her inner Lady Macbeth until he agreed to helm the project (without his usual directing partner, brother Ethan). McDormand will, of course, be playing opposite Washington as Lady Macbeth. The play grapples with the idea that unchecked ambition can destroy people—and the universality of that message is why it’s still performed around the world hundreds of years later, making Macbeth one of Shakespeare’s most popular and enduring works. It’s also been modernized and adapted into novels like The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner and films like Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood; it was evenmade into an opera by Giuseppe Verdi. Shakespeare’s wordplay, rhyming couplets and cadence of iambic pentameter give Macbeth a simplicity and elegance that has simply been unparalleled in English literature. Before you experience Washington and McDormand in their sure-to-be outstanding performances, here are 75 of the most quotable quotes in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
Macbeth quotes
- “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.”
- “Infirm of purpose!”
- “More is thy due than more than all can pay.”
- “I have bought golden opinions from all sorts of people.”
- “The attempt and not the deed confounds us.”
- “Out damned spot!”
- “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?"”
- “Yet do I fear thy nature; it is too full o’ the milk of human kindness.”
- “Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.”
- “Present fears are less than horrible imaginings.”
- “Nothing is but what is not.”
- “The bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven or to hell.”
- “There are daggers in men’s smiles.”
- “There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.”
- “That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold, what hath quenched them hath given me fire."
- “Methought I heard a voice cry, ‘Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep’”
- “Look like th’ innocent flower, but be the serpent under ‘t.”
- “It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman, which gives the stern’st good-night.”
- “Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble”
- “He died as one that had been studied in his death to throw away the dearest thing he owed, as ’t were a careless trifle."
- “Screw your courage to the sticking place.”
- “All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.”
- “What’s done cannot be undone.”
- “When our actions do not, our fears do make us traitors.”
- “Or have we eaten on the insane root that takes the reason prisoner?”
- “What! Can the devil speak true?”
- “What bloody man is that!”
- “Fair is foul and foul is fair.”
- “If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not.”
- “Come what come may time and the hour runs through the roughest day.”
- “A deed without a name.”
- “Had he not resembled my father as he slept I had done’t.”
- “I dare do all that may become a man; who dares do more is none.”
- “Wherefore could I not pronounce ‘Amen’? I had most need of blessing, and ‘Amen’ stuck in my throat.”
- “The earth hath bubbles, as the water has, and these are of them. Whither are they vanished?”
- “You shall be king.”
- “The patient must minister to himself.”
- “Glamis hath murdered sleep, and there Cawdor shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more!”
- “Screw your courage to the sticking place and we’ll not fail.”
- “To know my deed, ’twere best not know myself.”
- “Stands Scotland where it did?”
- “I am afraid to think what I have done; look on’t again I dare not.”
- “This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air nimbly and sweetly recommends itself unto our gentle senses.”
- “I have given suck, and know how tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me…[but] I would, while it was smiling in my face, have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums and dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you have done to this.”
- “‘Tis the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil.”
- “Foul whisperings are abroad. Unnatural deed do breed unnatural troubles; infected minds to their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets; More needs she the divine than the physician.”
- “What thou wouldst highly, that woulds thou holily; wouldst not play false, and yet wouldst wrongly win.”
- “The heaven’s breath smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle: where they most breed and haunt, I have observed, the air is delicate.”
- “They have tied me to a stake. I cannot fly, But, bear-like, I must fight the course.”
- “Then the liars and swearers are fools, for there are liars and swearers enow to beat the honest men, and hang up them.”
- “Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-ful of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood.”
- “How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!”
- “It will have blood they say; blood must have blood.”
- “What, all my pretty chickens and their dam at one fell swoop?”
- “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.”
- “I bear a charmed life.”
- “The weird sisters.”
- “Thou canst not say I did it; never shake thy gory locks at me.”
- “Say, from whence you owe this strange intelligence? Or why upon this blasted heath you stop our way with such prophetic greeting?”
- “He loves us not, he wants the natural touch.”
- “The raven himself is hoarse, that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements.”
- “Throw physic to the dogs: I’ll none of it.”
- “Macbeth shall never vanquished be until Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill shall come against him.”
- “Or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?”
- “False face must hide what the false heart doth know.”
- “A little water clears us of this deed.”
- “Shake off this downy sleep, death’s counterfeit, and look on death itself! up, up, and see the great doom’s image!”
- “Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear thy very stones prate of my whereabout.”
- “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.”
- “You lack the seasons of all natures–sleep.”
- “Had I but lived an hour before this chance, I had lived a blessed time.”
- “Confusion now hath made his masterpiece! Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope the Lord’s anointed temple, and stole thence the life o’ the building!”
- “Thriftless ambition, that wilt ravin up thine own life’s means!”
- “Macduff was from his mother’s womb, untimely ripped.”
- “Thou hast it now: King, Cawdor, Glamis, all, as the weird women promised; and, I fear, thou play’dst most foully for’t.” Next, The Force Is Strong With These 101 Most Epic Star Wars Quotes Ever
