BlogEnglish100 Macbeth Quotes for Your Essay Sorted by Themes and Techniques 🧙

100 Macbeth Quotes for Your Essay Sorted by Themes and Techniques 🧙

The Tragedie of Macbeth - Quotes Featured Image

Looking for Macbeth quotes that will make your Shakespeare essay stand out? 

As a Senior English Tutor who has helped over 150 HSC English students compile quotes and retain their understanding of prescribed texts since 2021, I’ve put together a list of 100+ Macbeth quotes with techniques, themes, and Band 6 sample sentences to go with them.

Keep scrolling to get started! 

What are 4 Key Quotes from Macbeth?
How to Analyse Quotes from Macbeth  
1. Ambition
2. Lady Macbeth
3. Guilt
4. Masculinity
5. Morality
6. Power
7. Nature
8. Manipulation

What are 4 Key Quotes from Macbeth? 

Shakespeare’s Macbeth has many iconic lines, including many you may have heard before, even if you haven’t read the play! Here are four of the most famous lines from Macbeth:

  1. “Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand?” (Act II Scene I)
    This moment, right before Macbeth murders Duncan, reflects Macbeth’s inner conflict: he knows what he is about to do is wrong, yet he cannot resist fate’s pull.
  2. “Double, double toil and trouble; / Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.” (Act IV Scene I) Spoken by the witches, this iconic chant captures the supernatural and ominous atmosphere of Macbeth. Their prophecy manipulates Macbeth into believing he is invincible.
  3. “Fair is foul, and foul is fair: / Hover through the fog and filthy air.” (Act I Scene I)
    These quotable words, spoken by the witches in the opening scene, foreshadow  Macbeth’s rise to power, which depends on appearances being deceiving.
  4. “What’s done cannot be undone.” (Act V Scene I)
    This iconic line, spoken by Lady Macbeth, reinforces the concept that violence and reckless ambition, once acted upon, cannot be reversed.

How to Analyse Quotes from Macbeth 

A common mistake I see students make is stopping at surface-level analysis. For example, if you’re discussing the Macbeth quote “Is this a dagger which I see before me?” simply stating it’s a hallucination misses the deeper meaning. 

A strong response would explore how the vision represents Macbeth’s inner turmoil, foreshadows his guilt, and reinforces the theme of fate versus free will:

Macbeth quotes

If you still need some help with your Macbeth analysis, why not check out Artie, the AI-powered English tutor from Art of Smart!

Whether you’re looking to get feedback on your paragraph, assistance in developing your analysis, or are just looking for more Macbeth quotes, techniques and themes, you can access these features and more in four easy steps:

  1. Head to the Art of Smart website and create an account. 
  2. Log in and select one of the tools from the sidebar, such as “find quotes” or “identify techniques”.
  3. Follow Artie’s prompts to get started.
  4. Use the feedback to polish your analysis and make your analysis even stronger!

Macbeth Quotes about Ambition

#1: Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more. / By Sinel’s death I know I am thane of Glamis.

Macbeth’s eagerness to learn more from the witches reveals his ambition and fatal flaw—his susceptibility to external influence and his desire for power.

#2: This supernatural soliciting / Cannot be ill, cannot be good. If ill, / Why hath it given me earnest of success, / Commencing in a truth? I am thane of Cawdor. / 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? Present fears / Are less than horrible imaginings.

  • Character: Macbeth
  • Act 1, Scene 3
  • Techniques: Monologue

Macbeth wrestles with the witches’ prophecy, showing his internal conflict. His reaction foreshadows his descent into moral corruption, as he is both intrigued and terrified of killing to feed his ambition.

#3: Stars, hide your fires; / Let not light see my black and deep desires.

  • Character: Macbeth
  • Act 1, Scene 4
  • Techniques: Characterisation, rhyming couplet

Macbeth acknowledges his dark ambitions and the need to conceal them, foreshadowing his moral descent into darkness and evil.

#4: I have no spur / To prick the sides of my intent, but only / Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself / And falls on th’ other.

  • Character: Macbeth 
  • Act 1, Scene 7
  • Techniques: Soliloquy, characterisation

Macbeth finds it difficult to justify his intent to murder Duncan — it’s only his ambition to be powerful that is pushing him to commit the act, otherwise he has not other motivation or reason for harming Duncan in such a manner.

#5: To be thus is nothing, / But to be safely thus. 

  • Character: Macbeth
  • Act 3, Scene 1
  • Techniques: Soliloquy

The paradox shows that, for Macbeth, power is not fulfilling unless it is secure, illustrating the self-destructive nature of his ambition.

#6: Fleance, his son, that keeps him company, / Whose absence is no less material to me / Than is his father’s, must embrace the fate / Of that dark hour. Resolve yourselves apart.

  • Character: Macbeth 
  • Act 3, Scene 1
  • Techniques: Characterisation

The quote is part of a speech in which Macbeth is planning to murder his friend and former ally, Banquo, in order to prevent Banquo’s descendants from fulfilling a prophecy that they will one day become kings. In this particular part of the speech, Macbeth is talking about Banquo’s son, Fleance, who is with Banquo at the moment. Macbeth is saying that Fleance’s presence is just as important to him as Banquo’s, but that he must also be eliminated in order to secure Macbeth’s position as king. The final sentence, “Resolve yourselves apart,” is directed to the murderers who are going to carry out the plan. Macbeth is telling them to separate and prepare themselves for the murder of both Banquo and Fleance.

#7: Come, seeling night, / Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day / And with thy bloody and invisible hand / Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond / Which keeps me pale.

  • Character: Macbeth
  • Act 3, Scene 2
  • Techniques: imagery, characterisation, fatal flaw  

Macbeth calls on darkness to hide his crimes. The imagery of blindness and destruction reflects his moral blindness and increasing detachment from humanity as his ambition grows.

#8: I am in blood / Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.

  • Character: Macbeth 
  • Act 3, Scene 4
  • Techniques: Imagery, figurative language, characterisation

The phrase “I am in blood” refers to the fact that Macbeth has already committed murder and has become deeply entangled in a web of violence and deceit. He is “stepped in so far” that he feels he cannot turn back without facing consequences that would be “tedious” or arduous. Macbeth realises that he has gone too far to back down and must continue his violent actions in order to maintain his hold on the throne. He is acknowledging that his actions have led him to a place where there is no turning back, and that he must continue on this path, no matter how grim the consequences.

#9: Though you untie the winds and let them fight / Against the churches, though the yeasty waves / Confound and swallow navigation up, / Though bladed corn be lodged and trees blown down… / Even till destruction sicken, answer me / To what I ask you.

  • Character: Macbeth 
  • Act 4, Scene 1
  • Techniques: Imagery, figurative language

The phrase “Though you untie the winds and let them fight / Against the churches, though the yeasty waves / Confound and swallow navigation up, / Though bladed corn be lodged and trees blown down…” is a list of extreme, apocalyptic events that Macbeth uses to emphasize the magnitude of the situation. He is suggesting that even if the world were to descend into chaos, the prophecy he received must still come true. The final sentence, “Answer me / To what I ask you,” is a direct plea to the witches for clarity and answers. Macbeth is seeking reassurance that their prophecy is true and wants to understand if there is anything he can do to alter the course of events.

#10: I’ll fight till from my bones my flesh be hacked. / Give me my armor.

  • Character: Macbeth
  • Act 5, Scene 3
  • Techniques: Characterisation, parallel
In this scene, Macbeth insists on wearing his armour, even though the battle is still some time away. He also says, “I will not be afraid of death and bane Till Birnam Forest come to Dunsinane”.

#11: Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, / 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!

  • Character: Macbeth 
  • Act 5, Scene 5
  • Techniques: Soliloquy, repetition

#12: 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.

  • Character: Macbeth 
  • Act 5, Scene 5
  • Techniques: Soliloquy, metaphor

#13: I ‘gin to be aweary of the sun, / And wish th’ estate o’ th’ world were now undone.—

  • Character: Macbeth 
  • Act 5, Scene 5
  • Techniques: Fatal flaw

#14: Ring the alarum-bell!—Blow, wind! Come, wrack! / At least we’ll die with harness on our back.

  • Character: Macbeth 
  • Act 5, Scene 5
  • Techniques: Characterisation 

#15: But swords I smile at, weapons laugh to scorn, / Brandished by man that’s of a woman born.

  • Character: Macbeth 
  • Act 5, Scene 6
  • Techniques: Fatal flaw

#16: 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 damned be him that first cries, “Hold, enough!”

  • Character: Macbeth 
  • Act 5, Scene 7
  • Techniques: Characterisation

Quotes about Ambition from Lady Macbeth

#17: Yet do I fear thy nature; / It is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness

  • Character: Lady Macbeth
  • Act 1, Scene 5
  • Techniques: Characterisation

#18: Art not without ambition, but without / The illness should attend it. 

  • Character: Lady Macbeth
  • Act 1, Scene 5
  • Techniques: Characterisation

#19: The raven himself is hoarse / That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan

  • Character: Lady Macbeth
  • Act 1, Scene 5
  • Techniques: Foreshadowing, characterisation, symbolism

#20: Naught’s had, all’s spent, / Where our desire is got without content. / ‘Tis safer to be that which we destroy / Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.

  • Character: Lady Macbeth
  • Act 3, Scene 2
  • Techniques: Rhyming couplet

Macbeth Quotes about Guilt

#21: Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. / I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. / 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-oppressèd brain?

  • Character: Macbeth 
  • Act 2, Scene 1
  • Techniques: Monologue, metaphor

#22: “Sleep no more! / Macbeth does murder sleep”—the innocent sleep, / Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care, / The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath, / Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, / Chief nourisher in life’s feast.

  • Character: Macbeth
  • Act 2, Scene 2
  • Techniques: Repetition, symbolism

#23: 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.

  • Character: Macbeth 
  • Act 2, Scene 2
  • Techniques: Figurative language, symbolism

#24: A little water clears us of this deed. / How easy is it, then! Your constancy / Hath left you unattended.

  • Character: Lady Macbeth
  • Act 2, Scene 2
  • Techniques: Irony, contrast

#25: We have scorched the snake, not killed it. / She’ll close and be herself whilst our poor malice / Remains in danger of her former tooth.

  • Character: Macbeth
  • Act 3, Scene 2
  • Techniques: Metaphor

#26: Oh, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife! / Thou know’st that Banquo, and his Fleance, lives.

  • Character: Macbeth
  • Act 3, Scene 2
  • Techniques: Metaphor, figurative language 

#27: But now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in / To saucy doubts and fears.

  • Character: Macbeth 
  • Act 3, Scene 4
  • Techniques: Alliteration

#28: Thanks for that. / There the grown serpent lies. The worm that’s fled / Hath nature that in time will venom breed; / No teeth for th’ present.

  • Character: Macbeth 
  • Act 3, Scene 4
  • Techniques: Metaphor

#29: Blood will have blood. / Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak. / Augurs and understood relations have / By magot pies and choughs and rooks brought forth / The secret’st man of blood

  • Character: Macbeth
  • Act 3, Scene 4
  • Techniques: Foreshadowing

#30: Out, damned spot! Out, I say!—One, two. / Why, then, ’tis time to do ’t. Hell is murky!— / Fie, my lord, fie! A soldier, and afeard? / What need we fear who knows it, when / none can call our power to account?—Yet / who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.

  • Character: Lady Macbeth
  • Act 5, Scene 1
  • Techniques: Disjointed speech, symbolism, parallel

#31: Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the / perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten / this little hand. Oh, Oh, Oh!

  • Character: Lady Macbeth
  • Act 5, Scene 1
  • Techniques: Imagery, hyperbole, symbolism

#32: I have lived long enough. My way of life / Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf, / And that which should accompany old age, / As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends, / I must not look to have, but, in their stead, / Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honor, breath / Which the poor heart would fain deny and dare not.

  • Character: Macbeth 
  • Act 5, Scene 3
  • Techniques: Figurative language

#33: But get thee back. My soul is too much charged / With blood of thine already.

  • Character: Macbeth 
  • Act 5, Scene 7
  • Techniques: Figurative language

Macbeth Quotes about Masculinity

#34: This have I thought good to deliver thee, my dearest partner of /  greatness, that thou might’st not lose the / dues of rejoicing, by being ignorant of what / greatness is promised thee. Lay it to thy / heart, and farewell.

  • Character: Lady Macbeth (reading Macbeth’s letter) 
  • Act 1, Scene 5
  • Techniques: Characterisation 

#35: I may pour my spirits in thine ear / And chastise with the valor of my tongue/ All that impedes thee from the golden round,”

  • Character: Lady Macbeth
  • Act 1, Scene 5
  • Techniques: Characterisation, metaphor

#36: 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. Make thick my blood. / Stop up the access and passage to remorse

  •  Character: Lady Macbeth
  • Act 1, Scene 5
  • Techniques: Imagery

#37: Come to my woman’s breasts, / And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers

  • Character: Lady Macbeth
  • Act 1, Scene 5
  • Techniques: Figurative language

#38: I have given suck, and know / How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me. / 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.

  • Character: Lady Macbeth 
  • Act 1, Scene 7
  • Techniques: Metaphor

#39: That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold. / What hath quenched them hath given me fire.

  • Character: Lady Macbeth
  • Act 2, Scene 2
  • Techniques: Juxtaposition, characterisation

#40: My hands are of your colour, but I shame / To wear a heart so white.

  • Character: Lady Macbeth 
  • Act 2, Scene 2
  • Techniques: Figurative language

#41: This is the very painting of your fear. / This is the air-drawn dagger which you said / Led you to Duncan. Oh, these flaws and starts, / Impostors to true fear, would well become /A woman’s story at a winter’s fire, / Authorized by her grandam. Shame itself!

  • Character: Lady Macbeth
  • Act 3, Scene 4
  • Techniques: Juxtaposition, characterisation

Macbeth Quotes about Morality

#42: There’s no art / To find the mind’s construction in the face. / He was a gentleman on whom I built / An absolute trust.

  • Character: Duncan
  • Act 1, Scene 4
  • Techniques: Foreshadowing

#43: The prince of Cumberland! That is a step / On which I must fall down, or else o’erleap, / For in my way it lies 

  • Characters: Macbeth
  • Act 1, Scene 4
  • Techniques: Aside, metaphor

#44: Look like th’ innocent flower, / But be the serpent under ’t. 

  • Character: Lady Macbeth 
  • Act 1, Scene 5
  • Techniques: Simile, metaphor

#45: This castle hath a pleasant seat. The air  / Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself / Unto our gentle senses.

  • Character: Duncan
  • Act 1, Scene 6
  • Techniques: Irony

#46: Where we are, / There’s daggers in men’s smiles. The near in blood, / The nearer bloody.

  • Character: Donalblain
  • Act 2, Scene 3
  • Techniques: Metaphor

#47: With hidden help and vantage, or that with both / He labored in his country’s wrack, I know not; / But treasons capital, confessed and proved, / Have overthrown him.

  • Character: Angus
  • Act 1, Scene 3
  • Techniques: Figurative language, irony 

#48: This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues, / Was once thought honest

  • Character: Malcolm
  • Act 4, Scene 3
  • Techniques: Connotation, parallel

#49: Macduff: I am not treacherous. / Malcolm: But Macbeth is. / A good and virtuous nature may recoil / In an imperial charge.

  • Characters: Macduff and Malcolm
  • Act 4, Scene 3
  • Techniques: Parallel, characterisation

Macbeth Quotes about Power

#50: For brave Macbeth—well he deserves that name— / Disdaining fortune, with his brandished steel, / Like valor’s minion carved out his passage / Till he faced the slave

  • Character: Captain
  • Act 1, Scene 2
  • Techniques: Direct characterisation, simile

#51: All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter!

  • Character: Third Witch 
  • Act 1, Scene 3
  • Techniques: Foreshadowing

#52: The son of Duncan— / From whom this tyrant holds the due of birth—

  • Character: Lord
  • Act 3, Scene 6
  • Techniques: Connotation, fatal flaw 

#53: Be bloody, bold, and resolute. Laugh to scorn / The power of man, for none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth.

  • Character: Second Apparition 
  • Act 3, Scene 1
  • Techniques: Foreshadowing

#54: The castle of Macduff I will surprise, / Seize upon Fife, give to th’ edge o’ th’ sword / His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls / That trace him in his line. No boasting like a fool. / This deed I’ll do before this purpose cool. 

  • Character: Macbeth
  • Act 4, Scene 1
  • Techniques: Characterisation, fatal flaw 

#55: New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows / Strike heaven on the face, that it resounds / As if it felt with Scotland and yelled out / Like syllable of dolor.

  • Character: Macduff
  • Act 4, Scene 3
  • Techniques: Imagery, repetition, setting 

#56: Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.

  • Character: Malcolm
  • Act 4, Scene 3
  • Techniques: Biblical allusion

#57: I think our country sinks beneath the yoke. / It weeps, it bleeds, and each new day a gash / Is added to her wounds.

  • Character: Malcolm
  • Act 4, Scene 3
  • Techniques: Personification, metaphor, setting

#58: Not in the legions / Of horrid hell can come a devil more damned / In evils to top Macbeth.

  • Character: Macduff
  • Act 4, Scene 3
  • Techniques: Connotation, hyperbole

#59: Now does he feel his title / Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe / Upon a dwarfish thief.

  • Character: Angus
  • Act 5, Scene 2
  • Techniques: Simile, characterisation

#60: Meet we the medicine of the sickly weal, / And with him pour we in our country’s purge / Each drop of us.

  • Character: Caithness
  • Act 5, Scene 2
  • Techniques: Metaphor

#61: Bring me no more reports. Let them fly all. /Till Birnam Wood remove to Dunsinane / I cannot taint with fear.

  • Character: Macbeth
  • Act 5, Scene 3
  • Techniques: Characterisation, fatal flaw 

#62: Bring it after me. / I will not be afraid of death and bane / Till Birnam Forest come to Dunsinane.

  • Character: Macbeth 
  • Act 5, Scene 3
  • Techniques: Rhyming couplet, fatal flaw 

#63: I have almost forgot the taste of fears.

  • Character: Macbeth 
  • Act 5, Scene 4
  • Techniques: Figurative language, characterisation

#64: I pull in resolution and begin / To doubt th’ equivocation of the fiend / That lies like truth. 

  • Character: Macbeth 
  • Act 5, Scene 5
  • Techniques: Fatal flaw

Quotes about Nature and the Supernatural

#65: Fair is foul, and foul is fair / Hover through the fog and filthy air

  • Character: 3 Witches
  • Act 1, Scene 1 
  • Techniques: Rhyming couplet, imagery

#66: When the hurly-burly’s done, / When the battle’s lost and won.

  • Character: 3 Witches
  • Act 1, Scene 1 
  • Techniques: Rhyming couplet, characterisation

#67: So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

#68: The weird sisters, hand in hand, / Posters of the sea and land, / Thus do go about, about, / Thrice to thine and thrice to mine / And thrice again, to make up nine. / Peace! The charm’s wound up.

  • Character: Witches
  • Act 1, Scene 3
  • Techniques: Imagery

#69: So withered and so wild in their attire, / That look not like th’ inhabitants o’ th’ Earth, / And yet are on ’t?

  • Character: Banquo
  • Act 1, Scene 3
  • Techniques: Characterisation

#70: Witchcraft celebrates / Pale Hecate’s offerings, and withered murder, / Alarumed 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.

  • Character: Macbeth
  • Act 2, Scene 1
  • Techniques: Symbolism, connotation, imagery

#71: Here’s a knocking indeed! If a man were porter of hell-gate, he should have old turning the key.

  • Character: Porter
  • Act 2, Scene 3
  • Techniques: Metaphor

#72: Lamentings heard i’ th’ air, strange screams of death, / And prophesying with accents terrible / Of dire combustion and confused events / New hatched to the woeful time. 

  • Character: Lennox
  • Act 2, Scene 3
  • Techniques: Imagery, foreshadowing

#73: By th’ clock ’tis day, / And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp. / Is ’t night’s predominance or the day’s shame / That darkness does the face of Earth entomb / When living light should kiss it? 

  • Character: Ross
  • Act 2, Scene 4
  • Techniques: Imagery

#74: Even like the deed that’s done. On Tuesday last, / A falcon, tow’ring in her pride of place, / Was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed.

  • Character: Ross
  • Act 2, Scene 4
  • Techniques: Imagery, symbolism

#75: Enter the GHOST OF BANQUO, and sits in MACBETH’s place

  • Stage direction
  • Act 3, Scene 4
  • Techniques: Imagery

#76: Shall raise such artificial sprites / As by the strength of their illusion / Shall draw him on to his confusion.

  • Character: Hecate
  • Act 3, Scene 5
  • Techniques: Rhyming couplet

#77: He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear / His hopes ‘bove wisdom, grace, and fear. / And you all know, security / Is mortals’ chiefest enemy.

  • Character: Hecate
  • Act 3, Scene 5
  • Techniques: Foreshadowing

#78: Double, double toil and trouble, / Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

  • Character: Witches
  • Act 4, Scene 1
  • Techniques: Imagery, rhyming

#79: Foul whisp’rings are abroad. Unnatural deeds / Do breed unnatural troubles.

  • Character: Doctor
  • Act 5, Scene 1
  • Techniques: Imagery, motif, parallel 

#80: As I did stand my watch upon the hill, / I looked toward Birnam, and anon methought / The wood began to move.

  • Character: Messenger
  • Act 5, Scene 5
  • Techniques: Foreshadowing

Quotes about Manipulation

#81: “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well / It were done quickly.”

  • Character: Macbeth
  • Act 1, Scene 7
  • Techniques: Soliloquy, Ambiguity

#82: “When you durst do it, then you were a man.”

  • Character: Lady Macbeth
  • Act 1, Scene 7
  • Techniques: Manipulation, Allusion to Gender Roles

#83: “We fail! / But screw your courage to the sticking-place, / And we’ll not fail.”

  • Character: Lady Macbeth
  • Act 1, Scene 7
  • Techniques: Imperative, Rhetoric

#84: “O, never / Shall sun that morrow see!”

  • Character: Lady Macbeth
  • Act 1, Scene 5
  • Techniques: Irony, Dark Imagery

#85: “You shall put / This night’s great business into my dispatch.”

  • Character: Lady Macbeth
  • Act 1, Scene 5
  • Techniques: Imperative

#86: “Why, worthy thane, / You do unbend your noble strength, to think / So brainsickly of things.”

  • Character: Lady Macbeth
  • Act 1, Scene 7
  • Techniques: Irony

#87: “Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, / Till thou applaud the deed.”

  • Character: Macbeth
  • Act 3, Scene 2
  • Techniques: Irony, Deceptive Language

#88: “Bear welcome in your eye, / Your hand, your tongue: look like th’ innocent flower, / But be the serpent under’t.”

  • Character: Lady Macbeth
  • Act 1, Scene 5
  • Techniques: Metaphor, Juxtaposition

#89: “Art thou afeard / To be the same in thine own act and valour / As thou art in desire?”

  • Character: Lady Macbeth
  • Act 1, Scene 7
  • Techniques: Rhetorical Question, Emotional Manipulation

#90: “Thou canst not say I did it; never shake / Thy gory locks at me!”

  • Character: Macbeth
  • Act 3, Scene 4
  • Techniques: Hallucination, Exclamation

#91: “And make our faces vizards to our hearts, / Disguising what they are.”

  • Character: Macbeth
  • Act 3, Scene 2
  • Techniques: Metaphor, Deceptive Language

#92: “Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.”

  • Character: Macbeth
  • Act 3, Scene 2
  • Techniques: Irony, Fatal Flaw

#93: “Was the hope drunk / Wherein you dress’d yourself?”

  • Character: Lady Macbeth
  • Act 1, Scene 7
  • Techniques: Rhetorical Question, Metaphor, Mockery

#94: “Thou hast it now: King, Cawdor, Glamis, all, / As the weird women promised, and I fear / Thou play’dst most foully for’t.”

  • Character: Banquo
  • Act 3, Scene 1
  • Techniques: Foreshadowing

#95: “Hie thee hither, / That I may pour my spirits in thine ear, / And chastise with the valour of my tongue / All that impedes thee from the golden round.”

  • Character: Lady Macbeth
  • Act 1, Scene 5
  • Techniques: Rhetoric, Metaphor

#96: “False face must hide what the false heart doth know.”

  • Character: Macbeth
  • Act 1, Scene 7
  • Techniques: Anaphora

#97: “Thou art too like the spirit of Banquo: down! / Thy crown does sear mine eyeballs.”

  • Character: Macbeth
  • Act 4, Scene 1
  • Techniques: Hallucination, Exclamation

#98: “The instruments of darkness tell us truths, / Win us with honest trifles, to betray ’s / In deepest consequence.”

  • Character: Banquo
  • Act 1, Scene 3
  • Techniques: Foreshadowing, Metaphor

#99: “To beguile the time, / Look like the time.”

  • Character: Lady Macbeth
  • Act 1, Scene 5
  • Techniques: Anaphora, Parallelism

#100: “Come, thick night, / And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, / That my keen knife see not the wound it makes.”

  • Character: Lady Macbeth
  • Act 1, Scene 5
  • Techniques: Dark Imagery, Symbolism, Personification

On the hunt for quotes from other texts?

Check out our list of quotes for the following texts:

We’ve also got articles specifically on plays by Shakespeare which you can check out below:

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Holden Walker is a Senior English Coach at Art of Smart Education, with 7+ years of tutoring experience. He is currently a PhD candidate in English Literature at the University of Wollongong and was named Art of Smart’s 1-on-1 Coach of the Year in 2024. Having taught over 150 students tutored since 2021, Holden brings a wealth of expertise and dedication to his work.

Maitreyi Kulkarni is a Content Writer at Art of Smart Education and is currently studying a Bachelor of Media and Communications (Public Relations and Social Media) at Macquarie University. She loves writing just about anything from articles to poetry, and has also had one of her articles published with the ABC. When she’s not writing up a storm, she can be found reading, bingeing sitcoms, or playing the guitar.

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