Macbeth Quotes

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

My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, / Shakes so my single state of man / That function is smother’d in surmise, / And nothing is but what is not.

And oftentimes to win us to our harm, / The instruments of darkness tell us truths; / Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s / In deepest consequence.—

So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, Thane of Glamis! SECOND WITCH. All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor! THIRD WITCH. All hail, Macbeth! that shalt be king hereafter!

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

When the hurlyburly’s done, / When the battle’s lost and won.

Two truths are told, / As happy prologues to the swelling act / Of the imperial theme.—

Lesser than Macbeth, and greater. / SECOND WITCH. / Not so happy, yet much happier. / THIRD WITCH. / Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none: / So all hail, Macbeth and Banquo!

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?