Top 188 Macbeth Motif Quotes & Sayings

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

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.

If, while I'm painting, I distort or destroy a motif, it is not a planned or conscious act, but rather it has a different justification: I see the motif, the way I painted it, is somehow ugly or unbearable. Then I try to follow my feelings and make it attractive. And that means a process of painting, changing or destroying - for however long it takes - until I think it has improved. And I don't demand an explanation from myself as to why this is so.

'Macbeth' was a very lucky play for me.

I have a thing about stars, they are my favourite motif.

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

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

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.

One day I noticed that I could go on working my art motif no matter what the weather might be. I no longer needed the sun, for I took my light everywhere with me.

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

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

[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.

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

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

The motif of Beat Generation is basically misunderstood, a misinterpreted area. There's this superimposition of the idea of a social rebellion, which was the communist interpretation through Lawrence Lipton.

I'm a romantic singer. That's my nook, my motif.

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

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

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

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

I'd really like to play Lady Macbeth.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

While people are fairly young and the musical composition of their lives is still in its opening bars, they can go about writing it together and sharing motifs (the way Tomas and Sabina exchanged the motif of the bowler hat), but if they meet when they are older, like Franz and Sabina, their musical compositions are more or less complete, and every motif, every object, every word means something different to each of them.

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

Obsession with self is the motif of our time.

That's the kind of motif I bring to the books - that people take charge of their own lives.

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

The motif of death plays an important role the human psyche in connection with archetypal and karmic material.

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.

I should like to take the wind and water and sand as a motif and work with them, but it has to be simplified in most cases to colour and force lines, just as music has done with sound.

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

The way one sees is also dependent upon one's emotional state of mind. This is why a motif can be looked at in so many ways, and this is what makes art so interesting.

For me a work of art must be an elevated interpretation of nature. The search for the ideal has been the purpose of my life. In landscape or seascape, I love above all the poetic motif.

An artist is generally expected to stick to one motif, one persona. People get used to seeing someone put down a certain thing.

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

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

the 'total overpaintings' developed... through incessant reworking. The original motif peeped through the edges. Gradually it vanished completely.

I have no motif, only motivation. I believe that motivation is the real thing, the natural thing, and that the motif is old-fashioned, even reactionary (as stupid as the question about the meaning of life)

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.

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.

'Macbeth' is an amazing story.

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

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

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

Macbeth was the first play I ever read.

I was in a production of 'Macbeth.'

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

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 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.

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.

It's a wonderful feeling just being in this creative motif.

I like the idea of it as a trickster motif. You know like you're kind of just messing around with people's memories of songs.