Themes in Macbeth – Quote banks

Gender (masculinity/femininity)

‘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.’ (Lady M 1.5)

‘Come to my woman's breasts,

And take my milk for gall.’ (Lady M 1.5)

‘I would, while it was smiling in my face,

Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums
And dashed the brains out.’ (Lady m 1.7)

‘I dare do all that may become a man.’ (Macbeth 1.7)

‘Bring forth men-children only,

For thy undaunted mettle should compose
Nothing but males’ (Macbeth 1.7)

‘Dispute it like a man’ (Malcolm 4.3)

‘I shall do so,
But I must also feel it as a man.’ (Macduff 4.3)

‘O gentle lady,
'Tis not for you to hear what I can speak.
The repetition in a woman's ear
Would murder as it fell.’ (Macduff (2.3)

‘O, these flaws and starts,

Impostors to true fear, would well become
A woman's story at a winter's fire,
Authorized by her grandam.’ (Lady M 3.4)

Versions of reality (appearance vs reality)

‘So foul and fair a day I have not seen’ (Macbeth 1.3)

‘There's no art
To find the mind's construction in the face.’ (Duncan 1.4)

‘Look like th' innocent

flower,
But be the serpent under't’. (Lady M 1.5)
‘False face must hide what the false heart doth
know.’ (Macbeth 1.7)

‘Mine eyes are made the fools o' th' other senses’ (Macbeth 2.1)

‘This is the very painting of your fear.’ (Lady M 3.4)

Fate and free will

‘For brave Macbeth (well he deserves that name) 

Disdaining Fortune’ (Captain 1.2)

‘If chance will have me king, why, chance may

crown me,
Without my stir.’ (Macbeth 1.3)

‘Rather than so, come fate into the list,

And champion me to th' utterance!’ (Macbeth 3.1)

Ambition

‘The Prince of Cumberland! That is a step

On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap,
For in my way it lies.’ (Macbeth 1.4)

‘Art not without ambition, but without

The illness should attend it.’ (Lady M 1.5)

‘I fear
Thou played'st most foully for't.’ (Banquo 3.1)

‘For mine own good

All causes shall give way.’ (Macbeth 3.4)

Supernatural

‘Have we eaten on the insane root

That takes the reason prisoner?’ (Banquo 1.3)

‘That look not like th' inhabitants o' th' Earth

And yet are on 't?’ (Banquo 1.3)

‘Come, you spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here’ (Lady M, 1.5)

‘Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn, and cauldron bubble’ (The Witches 4.1)
Guilt

‘Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood

Clean from my hand?’ (Macbeth 2.2)

‘I could not say 'Amen,'’ (Macbeth 2.2)

‘Out, damned spot! out, I say’ (Lady M 5.1)

‘To bed, to bed. There’s knocking at the gate. Come,

come, come, come, give me your hand. What’s done
cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed.’ (Lady M 5.1)

‘My soul is too much charged

With blood of thine already’ (Macbeth 5.8)

Bravery/courage

‘Like valour’s minion carved out his passage’ (Captain 1.2)

‘Speak, then, to me, who neither beg nor fear

Your favors nor your hate.’ (Banquo 1.3)

‘Yet do I fear thy nature;

It is too full o' th' milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way’ (Lady M 1.5)

‘At least we’ll die with harness on our back.’ (Macbeth 5.5)

Kingship vs tyranny

Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been

so clear in his office, that his virtues
will plead like angels.’ (Macbeth 1.7)

‘royalty of nature’ (Macbeth about Banquo 3.1)

‘The king-becoming graces

justice, verity, temp’rance, stableness,
Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness’ (Malcolm 4.3)

‘Bring thou this fiend of Scotland’ (Macduff 4.3)

‘We learn no other but the confident tyrant

Keeps still in Dunsinane’ (Siward 5.4)