Top 134 Macbeth Quotes & Sayings

I guess some characters always remain the same, and Macbeth is one of them.

My first part in a play was one of the witches in 'Macbeth.'

Macbeth's deed is done in horror, and without the faintest desire or sense of glory- done, one may almost say, as if it were an appalling duty; the instant it is finished, its futility is revealed to Macbeth as clearly as its vileness had been revealed beforehand

Macbeth is contending with the realities of this world, Hamlet with those of the next.

I'd really like to play Lady Macbeth.

To mankind in general Macbeth and Lady Macbeth stand out as the supreme type of all that a host and hostess should not be.

'Macbeth,' I am ambivalent about. I don't like that play, in fact.

I want to be evil! I did play Lady Macbeth on stage to Alec Baldwin's Macbeth back in New York in 1998. But I've played a lot of characters who are so righteous and understanding. I don't want to be a goody-goody two-shoes all the time.

In the description of night in Macbeth, the beetle and the bat detract from the general idea of darkness - inspissated gloom.

I want to play Eva Peron. I've already done a lot of Shakespeare, but I'd like to do Lady Macbeth.

Macbeth to Witches: What are these So wither'd and so wild in their attire, That look not like th' inhabitants o' th' earth, And yet are on 't?

Macbeth is a very popular play with audiences. If you want to sell out a theater, just mount a production of Macbeth. It's a short play, it's an exciting play, it's easy to understand, and it attracts great acting.

I can relate to anything. I once played Macbeth. I got a lot of laughs, so I quit.

I'm either the witch or Lady Macbeth of English politics, but someone gotta wear the pants in England when others wearing kilts

'Lady Macbeth' is a great opportunity for me to prove that maybe the outcome of 'The Falling' was not necessarily a fluke.

'Macbeth' is an amazing story.

I sometimes have these spells of compulsive truth. But as Lady Macbeth would say, "The fit is momentary."

A sweaty Macbeth with blood on his arms coming in fresh from the battle doesn't interest me.

I'm just having a wonderful time. It's an interesting thing that I'm very comfortable with this material and I don't know why. Maybe it's because I did MacBeth.

The most likely explanation is the most practical. 'Macbeth' is a very popular play with audiences. If you want to sell out a theater, just mount a production of 'Macbeth'. It's a short play, it's an exciting play, it's easy to understand, and it attracts great acting.

I did 'Macbeth' in elementary school, but I was never in theater or anything like that.

I read Macbeth as a secondary student in Nigeria and it was like an African play to me. It had all the right elements - witches, kings and assassinations.

[May 1958, on playing Macbeth at age 30 and age 48] When you're a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you're older, it's a straight part.

If you look at the play very closely, this is a thirdhand report of what a wonderful hero Macbeth is for saving Scotland. And in the next scene, he's planning to murder Duncan, and you never really know why or what's behind Macbeth.

Historically, Macbeth is one of the greatest kings Scotland ever had. He was on the throne for 19 years, and he simply has this dreadful reputation because Shakespeare manipulated history for the benefit of James I, who was paying him to write the play to blacken Macbeth's name.

The first time I saw 'Macbeth' was not the entire play. It was at acting school, and this student was working on Lady Macbeth's soliloquy. I felt something very special, and I knew then that I would one day experience Lady Macbeth, but I always thought it would be on stage and in French.

I've always wanted to play 'Lady Macbeth' and Strindberg's 'Miss Julie'.

I was in a production of 'Macbeth.'

I have such a great thing I want to do with Lady Macbeth - make her one of the witches - and I have this whole thing where she's very light and dressed in pink and dancing Gaelic dances and throwing roses, but then when her husband's coming home, she does incantations and pulls her hair back, puts on a black leather trenchcoat. I mean, I could tear it up if somebody would give me the chance! But do you think someone would ever let me do Lady Macbeth? I doubt it. But I'm going to keep talking about it.

It's in Macbeth: "The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon." I seldom have occasion to pull it out, but it's ready and waiting!

'Macbeth' is a show I'm going to do again someday.

Macbeth was the first play I ever read.

Every time 'Lady Macbeth' and everyone involved in the film gets nominated, it's amazing.

I drink to the general joy o’ the whole table." Macbeth

The multiplying villainies of nature do swarm upon him... [from Macbeth]

Maybe because Im a nice and sweet person in life, I like the darker roles. The really dark one is Lady Macbeth.

I'm much more likely to get lynched over 'The Killing' than 'Macbeth.'

I'd make a wonderful Lady Macbeth. I'll wear a pair of platform shoes or something.

We just don't need any more 'Macbeth's in the world, however brilliant mine might turn out to be.

A great performance like Lady Macbeth may be forgotten. Writing endures.

At 18 I began painting steadily fulltime and at age 20 had my first New York show at the Macbeth Gallery.

I couldn't be more proud to introduce Anne-Marie Duff, a phenomenal actress who is bursting on the world stage, to Broadway audiences as Lady Macbeth.

It isn't difficult to leave King Lear or Macbeth, but once you have gone back to yourself, you want it to be the same self you have always been.

Hamlet is to Macbeth somewhat as the Ghost is to the Witches. Revenge, or ambition, in its inception may have a lofty, even a majestic countenance, but when it has "coupled hell" and become crime, it grows increasingly foul and sordid. We love and admire Hamlet so much at the beginning that we tend to forget that he is as hot-blooded as the earlier Macbeth when he kills Polonius and the King, cold-blooded as the later Macbeth or Iago when he sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to death.

I think 'Macbeth' was a play that I've always gotten so much out of. My wife played Lady Macbeth in a play, and I designed it. There are things in there that are just kind of extraordinary.

I started to itch to do a play again and 'Macbeth' came to the surface in my mind. I never thought I would do it in a conventional way. A sweaty Macbeth with blood on his arms coming in fresh from the battle doesn't interest me.

I think there is this huge hole in Shakespeare that you do not know why Macbeth is who he is.

Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? - Lady Macbeth

If Shakespeare had to go on an author tour to promote Romeo and Juliet, he never would have written Macbeth.

Macbeth: How does your patient, doctor? Doctor: Not so sick, my lord, as she is troubled with thick-coming fancies that keep her from rest. Macbeth: Cure her of that! Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, raze out the written troubles of the brain, and with some sweet oblivious antidote cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon her heart. Doctor: Therein the patient must minister to himself.

I always assumed I would leave drama school and do 'Lady Macbeth' and all sorts of serious things. It just didn't happen.

I can always do theater; I can do Ibsen, I can do Macbeth, I can do Chekhov, I can do Moliere, Othello, I can do Richard III.

Performing a one-man Macbeth feels like the greatest challenge.

'Macbeth' is one of those books that demand all of your attention.

Maybe because I'm a nice and sweet person in life, I like the darker roles. The really dark one is Lady Macbeth.

The idea of Macbeth as a conscience-torm ented man is a platitude as false as Macbeth himself. Macbeth has no conscience. His main concern throughout the play is that most selfish of all concerns: to get a good night's sleep.

I want to play Lady Macbeth. I have a big chip on my shoulder about Lady Macbeth. People usually play her as this cold, Greek witch, but there's no evidence of that in the text! I think her intentions are pure.

[Macbeth] is historically set in a place depicted by Shakespeare as brutal and violent, incredibly superstitious, and that's something that I do believe is Scottish.

'Macbeth' was a very lucky play for me.

I did theater at Spelman until I graduated from there, and I got to work with such luminous actresses as Diana Sands in 'Macbeth.'