Macbeth Quotes

And I felt comfort. Finally. All I'd wanted for so long was for someone to explain everything that had happened to me in this same way. To label it neatly on a page: this leads to this leads to this. I knew, deep down, it was more complicated than that, but watching Jason, I was hopeful. He took the mess that was Macbeth and fixed it, and I had to wonder if he might, in some small way, be able to do the same for me. So I moved myself closer to him, and I'd been there ever since. ~ Sarah Dessen

Shakespeare will not allow Falstaff to die upon stage. We see and hear the deaths of Hamlet, Cleopatra, Antony, Othello, and Lear. Iago is led away to die silently under torture. Macbeth dies offstage but he goes down fighting. Falstaff dies singing the Twenty-third Psalm, smiling upon his fingertips, playing with flowers, and crying aloud to God three or four times. That sounds more like pain than prayer.
We do not want Sir John Falstaff to die. And of course he does not. He is life itself. ~ Harold Bloom

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

Macbeth:
If we should fail?
Lady Macbeth:
We fail?
But screw your courage to the sticking place,
And we'll not fail. ~ William Shakespeare

Sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir tree. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The tensions are always based on financial resources. Something like film is very problematic because it is viewed as an art form and also as an industry with a pure commercial base. ~ Ann Macbeth

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

Any new producer starting up is to get investors' confidence. Investors are still very very wary of anything to do with the arts world. ~ Ann Macbeth

Why a should a dream be any less real than this table. Or Macbeth be less real than today's newspaper. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

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

Macbeth to Witches: What are these So wither'd and so wild in their attire, That look not like th' inhabitants o' th' earth, And yet are on 't? ~ William Shakespeare

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

We fail?
But screw your courage to the sticking place
And we'll not fail. (Lady Macbeth) ~ William Shapespeare

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

Since words elude me when I need them most, I learned long ago that I cannot count on QUALITY time with God when I want to pray. I need QUANTITY and regularity. Quality is not something I can predict. My husband, Andy, and I might schedule an elaborate evening out with candles and a gourmet meal, but there is no guarantee that we'll have a wonderful time together
chopping onions peppers die by side in the kitchen, reading together on the couch, sitting on the front step watching our sons ride bikes, and making plans for our life together. ~ Sybil MacBeth

Still it cried 'Sleep no more!' to all the house: 'Glamis hath murder'd sleep, and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more, - Macbeth shall sleep no more! ~ William Shakespeare

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

A great perturbation in nature, to receive at once the benefit of sleep and do the effects of watching! ~ William Shakespeare

He took the mess that was Macbeth and fixed it, and I wonder if he might, in some small way, be able to do the same for me. ~ Sarah Dessen

I was playing Rasputin and what was motivating him was crumpet really, and I was extremely keen on crumpet so I was really rather good as Rasputin. And my next catastrophic failure was Macbeth, who I played in the style of a crumpet-lover, and then when Doctor Who came along, I embraced this lunacy, this cloud-cuckoo-land where people had to be convinced by absolute nonsense. I came from a very religious background, so it was easy for me to believe in something I knew nothing about. ~ Tom Baker

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

What are you doing sister? / Killing swine. ~ William Shakespeare

...he lifted the fat and frightened hawk onto his fist reciting it passages from Hamlet, Macbeth, Richard II, Othello-- 'but tragedy had to be kept out of the voice'-- and all the sonnets he could remember, whistling hymns to it, playing it Gilbert and Sullivan and Italian opera, and deciding, on reflection, that hawks liked Shakespeare best. ~ Helen Macdonald

At 13, in my first year of Tonbridge, I went up for the part of Macbeth. I was up against the 17- and 18-year-olds, but for some reason I got the part. It made me incredibly unpopular with my peers, but it was the English and drama teachers who stepped in to save me when others wanted me kicked out of the school. ~ Dan Stevens

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

Indeed the worthy housewife was of such a capricious nature, that she not only attained a higher pitch of genius than Macbeth, in respect of her ability to be wise, amazed, temperate and furious, loyal and neutral in an instant, but would sometimes ring the changes backwards and forwards on all possible moods and flights in one short quarter of an hour; performing, as it were, a kind of triple bob major on the peal of instruments in the female belfry, with a skilfulness and rapidity of execution that astonished all who heard her. ~ Charles Dickens

I'd make a wonderful Lady Macbeth. I'll wear a pair of platform shoes or something. ~ Bette Midler

For when I speak of the banality of evil, I do so only on the strictly factual level, pointing to a phenomenon which stared one in the face at the trial. Eichmann was not Iago and not Macbeth, and nothing would have been farther from his mind than to determine with Richard III 'to prove a villain.' Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all… He merely, to put the matter colloquially, never realized what he was doing… It was sheer thoughtlessness - something by no means identical with stupidity - that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of that period. And if this is 'banal' and even funny, if with the best will in the world one cannot extract any diabolical or demonic profundity from Eichmann, this is still far from calling it commonplace… That such remoteness from reality and such thoughtlessness can wreak more havoc than all the evil instincts taken together which, perhaps, are inherent in man - that was, in fact, the lesson one could learn in Jerusalem. ~ Hannah Arendt

Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) was a profoundly important analysis of human states of mind - a kind of early philosophical/ psychological study. He sees 'melancholy' as part of the human condition, especially love melancholy and religious melancholy. His concerns are remarkably close to those which Shakespeare explores in his plays. Ambition, for example, Burton describes as 'a proud covetousness or a dry thirst of Honour, a great torture of the mind, composed of envy, pride and covetousness, a gallant madness' - words which could well be applied to Macbeth. ~ Ronald Carter

I couldn't stop now. I'd caused so much misery that stopping now would earn me all the misery plus no reward at the end. I had to keep going. ~ Clare Urbanski

There's husbandry in heaven; Their candles are all out. ~ William Shakespeare

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

Macbeth is a play that points to the advent, much like the turbulent last century of the Middle Ages, of a modern age gradually deracinated from its Christian grounding and increasingly enamored of a neopagan notion of virtu, of potentially infinite human achievement severed from metaphysical considerations. ~ William Shakespeare

If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me. ~ William Shakespeare

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

Macbeth was the first play I ever read. ~ Alan Cumming

My way of life
Is fall'n into the sear and yellow leaf. ~ William Shakespeare

One needs some really good food and drink after all the magnificent blood and gloom of Macbeth. Shakespeare always makes me ravenous ~ Agatha Christie

His silver skin laced with his golden blood. ~ William Shakespeare

In the description of night in Macbeth, the beetle and the bat detract from the general idea of darkness - inspissated gloom. ~ Samuel Johnson

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

Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill. ~ William Shakespeare

The dichotomy between art and industry is totally dysfunctional in terms of film. ~ Ann Macbeth

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

Not all suicides are suicides, some are murders! ~ Md. Ziaul Haque

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

'Macbeth' is an amazing story. ~ Andy Serkis

The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures. Lady Macbeth ~ William Shakespeare

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

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

Birkenau simmered in the July sun like some hideous brew, a witch's potion of blood, sweat, smoke, and excrement worthy of something the weird sisters might have cooked up in Macbeth. ~ J. Michael Dolan

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

Too nice, and yet too true! ~ William Shakespeare

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

The essence of Macbeth is seeing a great and intelligent man succumb to the forces of darkness. What gives the tragedy ~ William Shakespeare

But wherefore could not I pronounce 'Amen'? I had most need of blessing, and 'Amen' Stuck in my throat. ~ William Shakespeare

The primary characteristics of the Shakespearean soul present themselves in Macbeth: the soul has free will, reason, conscience, and corporeality. The effect of these beliefs is holistic: they work together, whether a character be virtuous or sinful. More, no character stands alone morally, because Shakespeare assumes, theologically, that the bonds of family and society are sacred. With respect to the individual, however, there is one overarching principle at work. The fall of an individual's soul - the loss of his freedom, the ruin of his reason, the confusion of his conscience, the seduction of his flesh by lies and imagination - is a negation of his soul. ~ William Shakespeare

We are here predominantly to support independent filmmakers and their needs. We are also here to assist people actually in their production, non-commercial people in their production. ~ Ann Macbeth

I pray you school yourself. [MacBeth, Act 1V, Scene 2] ~ William Shakespeare

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

My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man
That function is smothered in surmise,
And nothing is but what is not. ~ William Shakespeare

I was in a production of 'Macbeth.' ~ Richard C. Armitage

Bleed, bleed, poor country!Great tyranny, lay thou thy basis sure;For goodness dares not check thee!His title is affear'd.Shakesp.Macbeth. ~ Samuel Johnson

Then she said, "Thorfinn!" quickly, and moved to him; but had hardly got to his side before he loosed his fingers and thumbs and plunged them down to the mattress like spear-points.
"No!Macbeth. Macbeth. Macbeth!" the name reached her like sling-shot.
Groa said, "They are the same man. I should know. I married both. ~ Dorothy Dunnett

Sleep, that deplorable curtailment of the joy of life. ~ Virginia Woolf

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

When the most learned evolutionists can give neither the how nor the why, the marvels seem to show that adaptation is inexplicable. Yet those who cannot explain it will not admit that it is inexplicable. This is a strange situation, only partly ascribable to the rather unscientific conviction that evidence will be found in the future. It is due to a psychological quirk [in the minds of its advocates]. ~ Norman Macbeth

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

The attempt and not the deed confounds us. ~ William Shakespeare

She came leaping towards me, like Lady Macbeth coming to get first-hand news from the guest-room. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

MACBETH
I will not yield,
To kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet,
And to be baited with the rabble's curse.
Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane,
And thou opposed, being of no woman born,
Yet I will try the last. Before my body
I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,
And damn'd be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough! ~ William Shakespeare

At 18 I began painting steadily fulltime and at age 20 had my first New York show at the Macbeth Gallery. ~ Andrew Wyeth

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

The two sides of the equation are the same. We have a tautology. The definition is meaningless. ~ Norman Macbeth

The multiplying villainies of nature do swarm upon him ... [from Macbeth] ~ Alan Moore

The existing documentary makers still believe that it is impossible to produce drama material in this State, otherwise they would be doing it, they say. ~ Ann Macbeth

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

Shakespeare, who never could think up a plot by himself, found this one [Macbeth] in Holinshed's Chronicles, changing it just enough so that no one would recognize the source. He didn't count on the resourcefulness of modern scholars, who have to discover things like this to become associate professors. ~ Richard Armour

I was my class playwright and I wrote plays set in villages with kings and chiefs.My plays were about treason and betrayals. If they were influenced by Macbeth, they were also influenced by Nigerian plays I had seen and Village Headmaster, a television drama series I had watched as a child. ~ Sefi Atta

I have bought golden opinions from all sorts of people. ~ William Shakespeare

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

Out! out! damned spot ..All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweaten this little hand ~ Lady Macbeth

Macbeth: We'll surely go to hell for this.
Lady Macbeth: And when we do, we'll rule that too. ~ William Shakespeare

English
So much to say, so little time.
Miss Wilson kept interrupting our chat with her so-called love of Shakespeare. For
goodness' sake. Hers is not the love that dares not speak its name, hers is the love that bangs on and on about Billy. It's all "What ho, my lord" and "Oh look, here comes MacBeth talking total bollocks. ~ Louise Rennison

The idea of Macbeth as a conscience-torm ented man is a platitude as false as Macbeth himself. Macbeth has no conscience. His main concern throughout the play is that most selfish of all concerns: to get a good night's sleep. ~ Mary McCarthy

Nothing in his life became him like leaving it. ~ William Shakespeare

What, then, can Shakespearean tragedy, on this brief view, tell us about human time in an eternal world? It offers imagery of crisis, of futures equivocally offered, by prediction and by action, as actualities; as a confrontation of human time with other orders, and the disastrous attempt to impose limited designs upon the time of the world. What emerges from Hamlet is--after much futile, illusory action--the need of patience and readiness. The 'bloody period' of Othello is the end of a life ruined by unseasonable curiosity. The millennial ending of Macbeth, the broken apocalypse of Lear, are false endings, human periods in an eternal world. They are researches into death in an age too late for apocalypse, too critical for prophecy; an age more aware that its fictions are themselves models of the human design on the world. But it was still an age which felt the human need for ends consonant with the past, the kind of end Othello tries to achieve by his final speech; complete, concordant. As usual, Shakespeare allows him his tock; but he will not pretend that the clock does not go forward. The human perpetuity which Spenser set against our imagery of the end is represented here also by the kingly announcements of Malcolm, the election of Fortinbras, the bleak resolution of Edgar.

In apocalypse there are two orders of time, and the earthly runs to a stop; the cry of woe to the inhabitants of the earth means the end of their time; henceforth 'time shall be no more.' I ~ Frank Kermode

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

So fair and foul a day I have not seen. ~ William Shakespeare

And now about the cauldron sing
Like elves and fairies in a ring,
Enchanting all that you put in. ~ William Shakespeare

I see any production of any nature being good for the development of the whole industry. ~ Ann Macbeth

How now! Here's the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.
Lady Macbeth ~ William Shakespeare

A great performance like Lady Macbeth may be forgotten. Writing endures. ~ Susan Strasberg

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

I cannot but remember such things were, That were most precious to me. ~ Lois Lowry

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

Stand not upon the order of your going, But go at once."
Macbeth. Act III Sc. 4, Line 119 ~ Jess Waid

Earlier I described the component stages of sleep. Here, I reveal the attendant virtues of each. Ironically, most all of the "new," twenty-first century discoveries regarding sleep were delightfully summarized in 1611 in Macbeth, act two, scene two, where Shakespeare prophetically states that sleep is "the chief nourisher in life's feast."* Perhaps, with less highfalutin language, your mother offered similar advice, extolling the benefits of sleep in healing emotional wounds, helping you learn and remember, gifting you with the solutions to challenging problems, and preventing sickness and infection. Science, it seems has simply been evidential, providing proof of everything your mother, and apparently Shakespeare, knew about the wonders of sleep.

----------------------------------
*"Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care,
The death of each day's life, source labour's bath
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast,--"
William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Folger Shakespeare Library (New York: Simon & Schuster; first edition, 2003). ~ Matthew Walker

The worst thing that you can do in terms of bringing a product up to the market is to be two days after someone else has brought a similar product to the international market-It's dead. ~ Ann Macbeth

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