What are the key quotes in Macbeth?

How many Macbeth quotes do you need?

Around 12 to 15 short quotations is a realistic bank for one play: enough to cover the main characters and themes, and few enough to learn exactly. The exam is closed book, but the extract printed on the paper gives you quotations for the first part of your answer. Your memorised bank is for the rest of the play.

Choose lines that work for more than one question. "Stars, hide your fires" works for a question on Macbeth and for one on ambition. The lists below hold more than you need, so pick the ones that fit your notes and your teacher's focus.

Quotes about Macbeth

• "So foul and fair a day I have not seen" (Act 1 Scene 3): his first line echoes the witches before he has even met them.
• "If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me, / Without my stir" (Act 1 Scene 3): for a moment he hopes fate will act so that he does not have to.
• "Stars, hide your fires; / Let not light see my black and deep desires" (Act 1 Scene 4): ambition that needs darkness to hide in.
• "We will proceed no further in this business" (Act 1 Scene 7): his conscience wins, but only for a few minutes.
• "I am in blood / Stepped in so far" (Act 3 Scene 4): murder has become a river, and turning back now seems as hard as wading on.
• "Life's but a walking shadow" (Act 5 Scene 5): after his wife's death, life seems empty of meaning.

Quotes about Lady Macbeth

• "too full o' th' milk of human kindness" (Act 1 Scene 5): she sees kindness as her husband's weakness.
• "unsex me here" (Act 1 Scene 5): she asks to lose the gentleness her society expected of women.
• "look like th' innocent flower, / But be the serpent under't" (Act 1 Scene 5): evil hidden under an innocent surface, like the serpent in the Garden of Eden.
• "When you durst do it, then you were a man" (Act 1 Scene 7): she wins by making manhood mean daring to kill.
• "Out, damned spot! out, I say!" (Act 5 Scene 1): her commands no longer work, even on a stain.

Quotes about Banquo, Duncan, Macduff and Malcolm

• "The instruments of darkness tell us truths" (Act 1 Scene 3, Banquo): he sees the trap that Macbeth walks into.
• "There's no art / To find the mind's construction in the face" (Act 1 Scene 4, Duncan): you cannot read a traitor in his face, Duncan says, just before Macbeth walks in.
• "I fear / Thou play'dst most foully for't" (Act 3 Scene 1, Banquo): he suspects Macbeth, and stays silent.
• "I must also feel it as a man" (Act 4 Scene 3, Macduff): grief as part of being a man, a gentler idea of manhood than Lady Macbeth's.
• "this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen" (the final scene, Malcolm): the official verdict on the Macbeths, which the play has made more complicated.

Quotes about the witches and the supernatural

• "Fair is foul, and foul is fair" (Act 1 Scene 1): a paradox, a statement that seems to contradict itself, turning good and evil upside down.
• "Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none" (Act 1 Scene 3): the prophecy that later makes Banquo a target.
• "Is this a dagger which I see before me" (Act 2 Scene 1): a vision that may come from Macbeth's own guilty mind.
• "By the pricking of my thumbs, / Something wicked this way comes" (Act 4 Scene 1): even the witches now call Macbeth wicked.
• "none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth" (Act 4 Scene 1): a promise that is true, yet built to mislead.

Quotes about ambition and power

• "Art not without ambition, but without / The illness should attend it" (Act 1 Scene 5): Lady Macbeth thinks ambition needs wickedness to go with it.
• "Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself" (Act 1 Scene 7): Macbeth names his own flaw and predicts his fall.
• "Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown" (Act 3 Scene 1): power with no son to inherit it.
• "like a giant's robe / Upon a dwarfish thief" (Act 5 Scene 2, Angus): a stolen title that never fitted.

Quotes about guilt, blood and sleep

• "Macbeth does murder sleep" (Act 2 Scene 2): sleep, a symbol of innocence, becomes a victim.
• "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand?" (Act 2 Scene 2): guilt that feels bigger than the sea.
• "A little water clears us of this deed" (Act 2 Scene 2): Lady Macbeth's confidence, which the play later reverses.
• "O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!" (Act 3 Scene 2): guilt and fear as stinging creatures.
• "What, will these hands ne'er be clean?" (Act 5 Scene 1): the guilt she once dismissed returns.

Quotes about kingship and order

• "Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope / The Lord's anointed temple" (Act 2 Scene 3, Macduff): "sacrilegious" means disrespectful to something holy, so killing the king is treated as a crime against God.
• "'Tis unnatural, / Even like the deed that's done" (Act 2 Scene 4, the Old Man): nature itself reacts to the murder.
• "Bleed, bleed, poor country!" (Act 4 Scene 3, Macduff): Scotland pictured as a wounded body under Macbeth's rule.
• "Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell" (Act 4 Scene 3, Malcolm): this recalls Lucifer, the brightest angel, who fell through pride.

How do you use a quote in an answer?

Build the quotation into your own sentence instead of setting it apart on its own line. Writing that Macbeth's mind is "full of scorpions" lets you zoom straight in on one word. Then say what the word does: scorpions are poisonous and never still, so his thoughts sting him from the inside.

If a line escapes you in the exam, describe the moment precisely instead, for example by saying that Macbeth imagines his bloody hand turning the green sea red. Examiners credit close reference to the text as well as exact quotation. Only put quotation marks around words you are sure of.

How do you learn Macbeth quotes for a closed-book exam?

Test yourself instead of rereading. Cover the quote, write it from memory, check it, and bring back the ones you miss sooner. A few minutes most days works better than one long session a week. Then use each quote in a practice paragraph, because a quote you have already written about will come back more easily under pressure. Our guide to memorising English Literature quotes has the full method.