And make our faces vizards to our hearts, / Disguising what they are.

We have scorch’d the snake, not kill’d it. / She’ll close, and be herself; whilst our poor malice / Remains in danger of her former tooth.

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!—

Then comes my fit again: I had else been perfect; / Whole as the marble, founded as the rock, / As broad and general as the casing air: / But now I am cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d, bound in / To saucy doubts and fears.

This is the very painting of your fear: / This is the air-drawn dagger which you said, / Led you to Duncan.

There the grown serpent lies; the worm that’s fled / Hath nature that in time will venom breed, / No teeth for th’ present.—

The flighty purpose never is o'ertook / Unless the deed go with it. From this moment / The very firstlings of my heart shall be / The firstlings of my hand.

What, will the line stretch out to th' crack of doom?

But cruel are the times, when we are traitors, / And do not know ourselves; when we hold rumour / From what we fear, yet know not what we fear, / But float upon a wild and violent sea / Each way and move—

Wisdom! to leave his wife, to leave his babes, / His mansion, and his titles, in a place / From whence himself does fly? He loves us not: / He wants the natural touch; for the poor wren, / The most diminutive of birds, will fight, / Her young ones in her nest, against the owl.