Quotes to inspire and reflect

How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!

By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes. Open, locks, Whoever knocks!

Finger of birth-strangled babe, Ditch-deliver’d by a drab.

Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog.

Macbeth: What is the night? Lady Macbeth: Almost at odds with morning, which is which.

I am in blood Stepp’d in so far, that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er.

Stand not upon the order of your going, But go at once.

It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood: Stones have been known to move and trees to speak.

Hence, horrible shadow! Unreal mockery, hence!

What man dare, I dare: Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear, The arm’d rhinoceros, or the Hyrcan tiger; Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves Shall never tremble.

I drink to the general joy of the whole table.

The air-drawn dagger.

Thou canst not say I did it: never shake Thy gory locks at me.

Now good digestion wait on appetite, And health on both!

But now I am cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d, bound in To saucy doubts and fears.

Now spurs the lated traveler apace To gain the timely inn.

Then be thou jocund. Ere the bat hath flown His cloister’d flight, ere, to black Hecate’s summons The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums Hath rung night’s yawning peal, there shall be done A deed of dreadful note.

Come, seeling night, Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day, And with thy bloody and invisible hand Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond Which keeps me pale! Light thickens, and the crow Makes wing to the rooky wood.

We have scotch’d the snake, not kill’d it.

Duncan is in his grave; After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well; Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison, Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing Can touch him further.

So weary with disasters, tugg’d with fortune, That I would set my life on any chance, To mend it or be rid on ’t.

Things without all remedy Should be without regard: what’s done is done.

I am one, my liege, Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world Have so incens’d that I am reckless what I do to spite the world.

Murderer: We are men, my liege. Macbeth: Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men.

To be thus is nothing; But to be safely thus.

I must become a borrower of the night For a dark hour or twain.

A falcon, towering in her pride of place, Was by a mousing owl hawk’d at and kill’d.

To show an unfelt sorrow is an office Which the false man does easy.

Who can be wise, amaz’d, temperate and furious, Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man.

Had I but died an hour before this chance I had liv’d a blessed time; for, from this instant, There’s nothing serious in mortality, All is but toys; renown and grace is dead, The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees Is left this vault to brag of.

Confusion now hath made his masterpiece! Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope The Lord’s anointed temple, and stole thence The life o’ the building!

Shake off this downy sleep, death’s counterfeit.

Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red.

The labor we delight in physics pain.

Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead Are but as pictures; ’tis the eye of childhood That fears a painted devil.

Glamis hath murder’d sleep, and therefore Cawdor Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more!

I had most need of blessing, and “Amen” Stuck in my throat.

Methought I heard a voice cry “Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep,” the innocent sleep, Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care, The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, Chief nourisher in life’s feast.

Had he not resembled My father as he slept I had done ’t.

The attempt and not the deed Confounds us.

The bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell That summons thee to heaven or to hell.

It was the owl that shriek’d, the fatal bellman, Which gives the stern’st good-night.

Thou sure and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear The very stones prate of my whereabout.

Now o’er the one half-world Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtain’d sleep; witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecate’s offerings.

Shut up In measureless content.

Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee: I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling as to sight? or art thou but A dagger of the mind, a false creation, Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?

There’s husbandry in heaven; Their candles are all out.