Key quotations

Macbeth

‘So foul and fair a day I have not seen’ (Macbeth, Act 1 Scene 3): his first line echoes the witches.
‘Stars, hide your fires; / Let not light see my black and deep desires’ (Macbeth, Act 1 Scene 4): he hides his ambition.
‘I have no spur / To prick the sides of my intent, but only / Vaulting ambition’ (Macbeth, Act 1 Scene 7): ambition is his only motive.
‘Is this a dagger which I see before me’ (Macbeth, Act 2 Scene 1): the supernatural, or guilt.
‘O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!’ (Macbeth, Act 3 Scene 2): his torment as king.
‘I am in blood / Stepped in so far’ (Macbeth, Act 3 Scene 4): no way back.
‘Life's but a walking shadow’ (Macbeth, Act 5 Scene 5): life has become meaningless.

‘too full o' th' milk of human kindness’ (Lady Macbeth, Act 1 Scene 5): she sees kindness as weakness.
‘unsex me here’ (Lady Macbeth, Act 1 Scene 5): she rejects her womanhood.
‘Look like th' innocent flower, / But be the serpent under 't’ (Lady Macbeth, Act 1 Scene 5): deception.
‘When you durst do it, then you were a man’ (Lady Macbeth, Act 1 Scene 7): she attacks his manhood.
‘A little water clears us of this deed’ (Lady Macbeth, Act 2 Scene 2): no guilt, yet.
‘Out, damned spot, out, I say!’ (Lady Macbeth, Act 5 Scene 1): guilt destroys her.

‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair’ (the witches, Act 1 Scene 1): nothing is what it seems.
‘The instruments of darkness tell us truths’ (Banquo, Act 1 Scene 3): he distrusts the witches.
‘There's no art / To find the mind's construction in the face’ (Duncan, Act 1 Scene 4): dramatic irony.
‘none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth’ (second apparition, Act 4 Scene 1): a misleading promise.
‘He has no children’ (Macduff, Act 4 Scene 3): grief for his murdered family.
‘I must also feel it as a man’ (Macduff, Act 4 Scene 3): a better kind of masculinity.

Guilt: ‘Macbeth does murder sleep’ (Act 2 Scene 2); ‘Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand?’ (Act 2 Scene 2).
Violence: ‘It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood’ (Act 3 Scene 4).
Kingship: ‘Bleed, bleed, poor country!’ (Act 4 Scene 3); ‘like a giant's robe / Upon a dwarfish thief’ (Act 5 Scene 2).
Appearance and reality: ‘False face must hide what the false heart doth know’ (Act 1 Scene 7).

Remember

Learn short quotations that work for several essays. ‘Fair is foul’ fits the witches, appearance and reality, and Macbeth himself.