- Macbeth: For now I am bent to know by the worst means the worst. For mine own good, all causes shall give way. I am in blood stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o'er.
- Macbeth: Out. Out, brief candle. 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.
- [first lines]
- Older Witch: When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
- Middle-Aged Witch: When the hurly-burly's done. When the battle's lost and won.
- Young Witch: Where the place?
- Middle-Aged Witch: Upon the battlefield, there to meet with Macbeth.
- Older Witch: Fair is foul, and foul is fair. Hover through the fog and filthy air.
- Middle-Aged Witch: Macbeth. Hail to thee, Thane of Glamis.
- Older Witch: Macbeth. Hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor.
- Middle-Aged Witch: All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter.
- Banquo: Good sir, why do you start and seem to fear things that do sound so fair?
- Macbeth: If we should fail?
- Lady Macbeth: We fail. But screw your courage to the sticking place and we'll not fail.
- Macbeth: 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.
- Macbeth: Strange things I have in head that will to hand, which must be acted ere they may be scanned.
- Lennox: As two spent swimmers, that do cling together and choke their art. The merciless Macdonwald, worthy to be a rebel, for to that the multiplying villanies of nature do swarm upon him-from the western isles of kerns and gallowglasses is supplied; And fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling, Show'd like a rebel's whore: but all's too weak: For brave Macbeth-well he deserves that name disdaining fortune, with his brandish'd steel, which smoked with bloody execution, like valour's minion carved out his passage till he faced the slave; Which ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him, till he unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps, and fix'd his head upon our battlements! And to conclude: Victory fell on us.
- Lennox: He cannot buckle his distempered cause within the belt of rule. Those he commands move only in command. Nothing in love.
- Banquo: 'Tis strange, and often times, to win us to our harm, the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles to betray's in deepest consequence.
- Duncan: Whence cam'st thou, noble Prince?
- Angus: From Fife, great King, where Norwegian banners flout the sky and fan our people cold, assisted by that most disloyal traitor, the Thane of Cawdor.
- Thane of Cawdor: [bows his head] God save the King.
- Duncan: No more that Thane of Cawdor shall deceive our bosom interest. Go pronounce his present death and with his former title greet Macbeth.
- Angus: I'll see it done.
- Duncan: What he hath lost, noble Macbeth hath won.
- Macbeth: 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.
- Macbeth: My dearest love, Duncan comes here tonight.
- Lady Macbeth: And when goes hence?
- Macbeth: Tomorrow, as he purposes.
- Lady Macbeth: O never shall sun that morrow see!
- Lady Macbeth: 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. Come to my woman's breasts and take my milk for gall, you murthering ministers, wherever, in your sightless substances, you wait on nature's mischief.
- Lady Macbeth: I do fear thy nature. It is too full o' the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great. Art not without ambition but without the illness should attend it.
- Lady Macbeth: Thy letters have transported me beyond this ignorant present and I feel now the future in the instant.
- Lady Macbeth: 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.
- Lady Macbeth: To beguile the time, look like the time. Bear welcome in your eye, your hand, your tongue. Look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under't.
- Lady Macbeth: Wouldst thou have that which thou esteem'st the ornament of life and live a coward in thy own esteem, letting "I dare not" wait upon "I would"?
- Macbeth: Pr'ythee, peace. I dare do all that may become a man. Who dares do more is none.
- Banquo: A heavy summons lies like lead upon me and yet I would not sleep. Merciful powers! Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature gives way to in repose.
- Macduff: Shake off your downy sleep, man. Death's counterfeit. You come and look on death itself. Huh? Murder! Treason!
- Macduff: Confusion now hath made his masterpiece. Most sacrilegious murder hath broke open the Lord's anointed temple.
- Macbeth: You make me strange, even to the disposition that I owe when now I think you can behold such sights and keep the natural ruby of your cheeks when mine is blanched with fear.