Top 100 Quotes About Macbeth
#1. It must be remembered that the Iliad and Odyssey were composed as epic tales and not as historical texts. To use Shakespeare's Macbeth as a source for 11th-century Scottish politics would rather miss the point of the play, and the same is true of the Homeric epics.
Nic Fields
#2. 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
#3. When you're a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you're older, it's a straight part.
Laurence Olivier
#4. 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
#5. I couldn't be more proud to introduce Anne-Marie Duff, a phenomenal actress who is bursting on the world stage, to Broadway audiences as Lady Macbeth.
Jack O'Brien
#6. Ten years ago I was not heavily involved in the film world but on reflection it was a boom time with the mineral boom happening, so there was immense growth for industrial training films, documentaries to do with the mining, and the outback world.
Ann Macbeth
#7. '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
#8. Those he commands move only in command,
Nothing in love: now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe
Upon a dwarfish thief
William Shakespeare
#9. Maybe because I'm a nice and sweet person in life, I like the darker roles. The really dark one is Lady Macbeth.
Anna Netrebko
#10. The more commercial work that is happening, the more people are operating cameras and are setting up studio lights, the greater the opportunity for drama production to happen.
Ann Macbeth
#11. 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
#13. 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
#15. 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
#16. 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
#17. They will open up to what I would call corporate broadcastings where the non-commercial material will have air time. There's no possibility of that here right now, none.
Ann Macbeth
#18. 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
#19. 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
#20. Unsex me here and fill me from crown to toe full of direst cruelty That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose. Macbeth
William Shakespeare
#22. If Shakespeare had to go on an author tour to promote Romeo and Juliet, he never would have written Macbeth.
Joyce Brothers
#23. The two sides of the equation are the same. We have a tautology. The definition is meaningless.
Norman Macbeth
#24. Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? - Lady Macbeth
William Shakespeare
#25. As a prayer popper, I stay in touch with God. I send lots of spiritual postcards. Little bits and bytes of adoration, supplication, and information attached prayer darts speed in God's direction all day long.
Sybil MacBeth
#26. The British needlewoman follows blindly where the merchant leads.
Ann Macbeth
#27. We probably do not have a large enough industry here to ably support the independent filmmaker to move in and out. Much of the industry is based on full-time jobs here, institutionalised jobs.
Ann Macbeth
#28. And now about the cauldron sing
Like elves and fairies in a ring,
Enchanting all that you put in.
William Shakespeare
#29. Macbeth:
If we should fail?
Lady Macbeth:
We fail?
But screw your courage to the sticking place,
And we'll not fail.
William Shakespeare
#30. The foxglove, with it's stately bells Of purple, shall adorn thy dells.
David Macbeth Moir
#31. Natural selection is almost always handled in general temps . This means that it has no explanatory power when specific problems arise.
Norman Macbeth
#33. I want to play Eva Peron. I've already done a lot of Shakespeare, but I'd like to do Lady Macbeth.
Tamara Tunie
#34. 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
#35. Stand not upon the order of your going, But go at once."
Macbeth. Act III Sc. 4, Line 119
Jess Waid
#36. I'm the world's lightest sleeper. On a bad day, I can make Lady Macbeth look like a raging narcoleptic.
Jodi Taylor
#38. 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
#39. 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
#41. I'm not -
Lady Macbeth
Lucrezia Borgia
Catherine the Great. I am
- a woman doing what she has to do. I am
- the woman you made me.
Elena is at war.
Don Winslow
#42. 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
#43. Historically, Macbeth is one of the greatest kings Scotland ever had. He was on the throne for 19 years, and he simply has this dreadful reputation because Shakespeare manipulated history for the benefit of James I, who was paying him to write the play to blacken Macbeth's name.
David Hewson
#44. 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
#46. Most independent filmmakers in Britain and North America work for commercial crews and then have their own projects when they've got enough money saved up to do so.
Ann Macbeth
#47. 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
#48. The State Film Authority will be there for film as industry only, as is the case in all the other states, except Victoria. Victoria is moving more now into supporting non-commercial films.
Ann Macbeth
#49. 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
#50. When you are at the right age to play Hamlet you are still to young and immature to play it. It is much later, when you get the life experience and the emotional power, that you understand Hamlet or Macbeth.
Anthony Hopkins
#51. ...we had bypassed Romeo and Juliet and gone straight to Macbeth.
Michael Brooks
#52. I read Macbeth as a secondary student in Nigeria and it was like an African play to me. It had all the right elements - witches, kings and assassinations.
Sefi Atta
#53. 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
#54. 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
#55. Don't wear green in your dressing room,' suggested Miss Spink.
'Or mention the Scottish play, added Miss Forcible.
Neil Gaiman
#56. At 18 I began painting steadily fulltime and at age 20 had my first New York show at the Macbeth Gallery.
Andrew Wyeth
#58. The simplest case, where one is informed that a cat is black because it is black, may be harmless, though irritating and useless; but the actual cases [in statements of evolutionary theory] are always harder to detect than this, and may darken counsel for a long time.
Norman Macbeth
#59. 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
#60. Shakespeare without Othello, Lear, Macbeth and Hamlet would be all too much like Hamlet without the prince.
Brand Blanshard
#61. 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
#63. A great perturbation in nature, to receive at once the benefit of sleep and do the effects of watching!
William Shakespeare
#64. 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
#65. 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
#66. We're under the Arts Council under the Minister for the Arts. The Minister for the Arts and the Minister for Industrial Development have great difficulty in agreeing over who should fund what in terms of film.
Ann Macbeth
#68. I'm much more likely to get lynched over 'The Killing' than 'Macbeth.'
David Hewson
#69. After making my stage debut aged nine as Macduff's small son in 'Macbeth,' I had played a number of parts, from 'Twelfth Night's Viola to 'The Merchant Of Venice's Portia'.
Felicity Kendal
#71. I always assumed I would leave drama school and do 'Lady Macbeth' and all sorts of serious things. It just didn't happen.
Olivia Colman
#72. My mother had not acted for ten years. Not since a reviewer wrote that her portrayal of Lady Macbeth put him in mind of an exasperated society hostess burdened with unmannerly guests who had lost the new tennis balls, left the bathrooms in a mess, and finished the gin.
Victoria Clayton
#75. 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
#76. Ring the alarum-bell! Blow, wind! come, wrack!
At least we'll die with harness on our back.
William Shakespeare
#77. All the arts are predominantly national, and therefore the Australian Film Commission should be funding us. The battle gets more and more vicious each year.
Ann Macbeth
#78. 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
#79. 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
#81. Many actors want to play Hamlet and Macbeth. Ever since I became an actor, from the very beginning I just wanted to play a Shetland pony. I cannot explain why
Dustin Hoffman
#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
#83. The love that follows us sometime is our trouble, which still we thank as love.
William Shakespeare
#84. Although she far outranked Hamish, she had to wait patiently, because this was Lochdubh, where Hamish Macbeth was king.
M.C. Beaton
#85. I sometimes have these spells of compulsive truth. But as Lady Macbeth would say, "The fit is momentary."
Ken Kesey
#86. 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
#87. Performing a one-man Macbeth feels like the greatest challenge.
Alan Cumming
#88. 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
#89. You have always had individual directors who begin in the advertising or commercial world, but they are probably exceptions rather than the traditional pattern.
Ann Macbeth
#90. 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
#91. Siward: Then he is dead?
Ross: Ay, and brought off the field: your cause of sorrow
Must not be measured by the worth, for then
It hath no end.
William Shakespeare
#92. 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
#93. Video just accesses international information so much more readily.
Ann Macbeth
#94. Rose of the desert! thou art to me
An emblem of stainless purity,
Of those who, keeping their garments white,
Walk on through life with steps aright.
David Macbeth Moir
#95. I've never ever read a script. I really must read Macbeth, because I was in it once. I got a lot of laughs in that, I can tell you.
Tom Baker
#96. 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
#97. What bloody man is that, sir?" I tossed the paper in the grate, though there was no fire on this warm summer day. "Bartholomew, you are quoting from Macbeth, did you know? King Duncan in the first scene, which is ominous. He died rather horribly soon after.
Ashley Gardner
#98. A great performance like Lady Macbeth may be forgotten. Writing endures.
Susan Strasberg
#99. 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
#100. Unfortunately, in the field of evolution most explanations are not good. As a matter of fact, they hardly qualify as explanations at all; they are suggestions, hunches, pipe dreams, hardly worthy of being called hypotheses.
Norman Macbeth
