Top 100 Macbeth Macbeth Quotes
#1. A sweaty Macbeth with blood on his arms coming in fresh from the battle doesn't interest me.
Alan Cumming
#2. The thing that is so singular and stunning about Macbeth - indeed, it strikes one straightaway - is that all the magic Shakespeare put into writing it manages so entirely to harrow and astonish the soul.
William Shakespeare
#3. If you look at the play very closely, this is a thirdhand report of what a wonderful hero Macbeth is for saving Scotland. And in the next scene, he's planning to murder Duncan, and you never really know why or what's behind Macbeth.
David Hewson
#6. Macbeth is a very popular play with audiences. If you want to sell out a theater, just mount a production of Macbeth. It's a short play, it's an exciting play, it's easy to understand, and it attracts great acting.
Ian McKellen
#7. [Macbeth] is historically set in a place depicted by Shakespeare as brutal and violent, incredibly superstitious, and that's something that I do believe is Scottish.
James McAvoy
#9. The essence of Macbeth is seeing a great and intelligent man succumb to the forces of darkness. What gives the tragedy
William Shakespeare
#10. I'd make a wonderful Lady Macbeth. I'll wear a pair of platform shoes or something.
Bette Midler
#11. I've always wanted to play 'Lady Macbeth' and Strindberg's 'Miss Julie'.
Olivia D'Abo
#12. I think there is this huge hole in Shakespeare that you do not know why Macbeth is who he is.
David Hewson
#13. Methought I heard a voice cry, Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep, - the innocent sleep;
Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave 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.
William Shakespeare
#14. The plays he had liked were the one called Measure for Measure, and another one called Macbeth. They were easy to follow, and what happened in them was kind of like what happened in junior high school.
Jane Smiley
#15. Steve's sales pitch on the NeXT operating system was dazzling," according to Amelio. " He praised the virtues and strengths as though he were describing a performance of Oliver as Macbeth.
Walter Isaacson
#16. If you're a woman doing classic theater, the big roles are often destroyers. I've played Hedda Gabler, Lady Macbeth, some of the Chekhovian heroines, Electra, Phaedra - they're all powerful women, but they're forces of negativity.
Eve Best
#17. My first part in a play was one of the witches in 'Macbeth.'
Zendaya
#18. In the power and splendor of the universe, inspiration waits for the millions to come. Man has only to strive for it. Poems greater than the Iliad, plays greater than Macbeth, stories more engaging than Don Quixote await their seeker and finder.
John Masefield
#19. My wide eyes make me look much younger without make-up, and although it's fun to have a line in innocence corrupted, I doubt I'll get to play the vampy vixen or a Hedda Gabler or Lady Macbeth.
Talulah Riley
#20. your son has paid the soldier's price: death. He only lived long enough to become a man, and as soon as he proved that he was a man by fighting like one, he died"
Macbeth
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
#21. For me, what Macbeth is about is people who cannot face their fears and pain and instead of facing them and going beyond, they just run away and they try to cover this with power and violence, but it doesn't work.
Marion Cotillard
#22. Had Shakespeare listened to the news of Duncans death in a tavern or heard the knocking on his own bedroom door after he had finished the writing of Macbeth?
Graham Greene
#23. A great performance like Lady Macbeth may be forgotten. Writing endures.
Susan Strasberg
#24. I can always do theater; I can do Ibsen, I can do Macbeth, I can do Chekhov, I can do Moliere, Othello, I can do Richard III.
Ving Rhames
#25. Don Quixote is the best book out there on political theory, followed by Hamlet and Macbeth. There is no better way to understand the tragedy and the comedy of the Mexican political system than Hamlet, Macbeth and Don Quixote. They're much better than any column of political analysis.
Subcomandante Marcos Laura Castellanos
#26. Why a should a dream be any less real than this table. Or Macbeth be less real than today's newspaper.
Jorge Luis Borges
#28. Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return to plague the inventor.
William Shakespeare
#30. To mankind in general Macbeth and Lady Macbeth stand out as the supreme type of all that a host and hostess should not be.
Max Beerbohm
#33. The picture of me is nearly finished, and I think it is magnificent. The green and blue of the dress is splendid, and the expression as Lady Macbeth holds the crown over her head is quite wonderful.
Ellen Terry
#34. I don't think of 'Macbeth' as the villain. I don't think of 'King Lear' as the villain. I don't think of 'Hamlet' as the villain. I don't think of 'Travis Bickle' as the villain.
Damien Chazelle
#35. I think that the BBC's attitude toward the show while it was in production was very similar to that which Macbeth had toward murdering people - initial doubts, followed by cautious enthusiasm and then greater and greater alarm at the sheer scale of the undertaking and still no end in sight.
Douglas Adams
#36. If you think about Shakespeare, you remember Richard III and Macbeth before you remember Ferdinand, whose role is just to fall in love and be a bit of a wimp. I love the baddies. More important, though, is making the baddies somehow, weirdly, understood.
Mark Strong
#38. What sad, short lives humans live! Each life a short pamphlet written by an idiot! Tut-tut, and all that.
Stephen King
#39. I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And falls on the other.
William Shakespeare
#41. The multiplying villainies of nature do swarm upon him ... [from Macbeth]
Alan Moore
#43. There are always two sides to every story, Kelley. Something I learned playing Richard the Third and Macbeth: if you're playing the 'bad guy', you never really think of yourself as bad. It's just that your motives are often ... misunderstood by everyone else.
Lesley Livingston
#46. I see Macbeth as a young, open-faced warrior, who is gradually sucked into a whirpool of events because of his ambition. When he meets the weird sisters and hears their prophecy, he's like the man who hopes to win a million - a gamble for high stakes.
Roman Polanski
#48. I'm just having a wonderful time. It's an interesting thing that I'm very comfortable with this material and I don't know why. Maybe it's because I did MacBeth.
F. Murray Abraham
#49. Macbeth is contending with the realities of this world, Hamlet with those of the next.
Jones Very
#51. If Shakespeare had to go on an author tour to promote Romeo and Juliet, he never would have written Macbeth.
Joyce Brothers
#53. I want to do all kinds of things. I want to do some comedy. I'd love to do a romantic comedy, and I'd love to do some period pieces with classical text. I'd love somebody to cast me as Macbeth, but for a film. I just want to be all over the place.
Kevin Alejandro
#54. That, when they shall be opened, black Macbeth Will seem as pure as snow, and the poor state (55) Esteem him as a lamb, being compared With my confineless harms.
William Shakespeare
#55. I have been thinking a lot about what we see in villains, how we relate to villains, and what it is about certain villains that we actually empathize with. Like Macbeth. We're not supposed to like a guy who kills the king and takes over, but there's something about him we're really fascinated by.
Finn Wittrock
#56. The only still center of my life is Macbeth. To go back to doing this bloody, crazed, insane mass-murderer is a huge relief after trying to get my cell phone replaced.
Patrick Stewart
#58. I'm the world's lightest sleeper. On a bad day, I can make Lady Macbeth look like a raging narcoleptic.
Jodi Taylor
#59. Stand not upon the order of your going, But go at once."
Macbeth. Act III Sc. 4, Line 119
Jess Waid
#60. We three just stared. I thought of Macbeth's witches huddled around their cauldron. How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags. What is't you do?
A deed without a name.
We were as quiet as the gravestones around us.
Tessa Gratton
#62. Macbeth:
If we should fail?
Lady Macbeth:
We fail?
But screw your courage to the sticking place,
And we'll not fail.
William Shakespeare
#63. And now about the cauldron sing
Like elves and fairies in a ring,
Enchanting all that you put in.
William Shakespeare
#64. Sometimes I want to have a mental book burning that would scour my mind clean of all the filthy visions literature has conjured there. But how to do without 'The Illiad?' How to do without 'Macbeth?'
Geraldine Brooks
#65. It isn't difficult to leave King Lear or Macbeth, but once you have gone back to yourself, you want it to be the same self you have always been.
Paul Scofield
#66. Richard III is not likeable. Macbeth is not likeable. Hamlet is not likeable. And yet you can't take your eyes off them. I'm far more interested in that than I am in any sort of likeability.
Beau Willimon
#67. If I could mimic the dynamic of any Shakespearean marriage, I'd choose to mimic the Macbeths - before the murder, ruthless ambition, and torturous descents into madness and death, that is.
Jillian Keenan
#68. And you know, I hate to admit this, but I don't always think in terms of Shakespeare. When I eat, I do. When I'm at a restaurant, I'll think, 'Hmm, what would Macbeth have ordered?'
Liev Schreiber
#70. I use those medical gloves that fit very tightly and are disposable for all chopping - peppers, onions, garlic, etc. Very Lady Macbeth, I think.
Nora Ephron
#72. Life repeats Shakespearian themes more often than we think. Did Lady Macbeth, Richard III, and King Claudius exist only in the Middle Ages? Shylock wanted to cut a pound of flesh from the body of the merchant of Venice. Is that a fairy tale?
Varlam Shalamov
#73. 'Macbeth' is one of the best operas ever, and doing it was a great experience. I added some things to the opera based from my experience on the movie - such as some of the special effects and bits of film - to make it new and interesting. It was a very good work and a very good experience.
Dario Argento
#74. This tune goes manly.
Come, go we to the King. Our power is ready;
Our lack is nothing but our leave. Macbeth
Is ripe for shaking, and the powers above
Put on their instruments. Receive what cheer you may.
The night is long that never finds the day.
They exit.
William Shakespeare
#75. When you're a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you're older, it's a straight part.
Laurence Olivier
#77. At the word witch, we imagine the horrible old crones from Macbeth. But the cruel trials witches suffered teach us the opposite. Many perished precisely because they were young and beautiful.
Andre Breton
#78. Performing a one-man Macbeth feels like the greatest challenge.
Alan Cumming
#79. Far away, I could hear them lapping up my brains. Like Macbeth's witches, the three lithe cats surrounded my broken head, slurping up that thick soup inside. The tips of their rough tongues licked the soft folds of my mind. And with each lick my consciousness flickered like a flame and faded away.
Haruki Murakami
#80. I sometimes have these spells of compulsive truth. But as Lady Macbeth would say, "The fit is momentary."
Ken Kesey
#81. The love that follows us sometime is our trouble, which still we thank as love.
William Shakespeare
#82. Personally, I don't want to live with limitations. If there comes a time where I am dying to play Juliet or Macbeth, I want to make those avenues for myself.
Danielle Brooks
#84. Even if Lady Macbeth could have removed that damn spot, wouldn't her hands have been red from all of the scrubbing?
Jonathan Safran Foer
#85. Macbeth as a whole is awash with questions, sometimes questions responded to by another question, which helps to generate an atmosphere of uncertainty, anxiety and paranoid suspicion.
Terry Eagleton
#86. Ring the alarum-bell! Blow, wind! come, wrack!
At least we'll die with harness on our back.
William Shakespeare
#87. You're like Lady Macbeth without the murder." "Thank you. You have no idea how much of a compliment that is to me.
John Corey Whaley
#89. Macbeth's self-justifications were feeble - and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare's evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#90. I'm much more likely to get lynched over 'The Killing' than 'Macbeth.'
David Hewson
#92. When I was 16, I played Macbeth at school and my English teacher said, 'I think you may have acting talent. Try to get into the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain and see where you get.' I wouldn't have thought of that at all. I wanted to be a surgeon, but I wasn't a clever man.
David Suchet
#93. Your face, my thane, is as a book where men
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.
William Shakespeare
#94. I'm either the witch or Lady Macbeth of English politics, but someone gotta wear the pants in England when others wearing kilts
Margaret Thatcher
#95. Sawcy, and ouer-bold, how did you dare
To Trade, and Trafficke with Macbeth,
In Riddles, and Affaires of death;
And I the Mistris of your Charmes,
The close contriuer of all harmes,
Was neuer call'd to beare my part,
Or shew the glory of our Art?
William Shakespeare
#97. I had great English teachers in high school who first piqued my interest in Shakespeare. Each year, we read a different play - 'Othello,' 'Julius Caesar,' 'Macbeth,' 'Hamlet' - and I was the nerd in class who would memorize soliloquies just for the fun of it.
Ian Doescher
#98. I did a production of Macbeth in the 1960s in which I had a swordfight in the final scene. But the blade fell off my sword just as I was stabbing the guy. I ended up having to hammer him to death.
Alan Dale
#99. ...we had bypassed Romeo and Juliet and gone straight to Macbeth.
Michael Brooks
#100. I felt like I was hobbling, like one oof the old crones from Act I of Macbeth - God knows my hair felt scraggy enough that I must have looked the part.
P.C. Cast
