Life and Existence

Why should I play the Roman fool; and die On mine own sword?

She should have died hereafter; There would have been a time for such a word. 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. 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.

She should have died hereafter; There would have been a time for such a word. 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. 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.

She should have died hereafter; There would have been a time for such a word. 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. 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.

Macbeth: Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas’d, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, Raze out the written troubles of the brain, And with some sweet oblivious antidote Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart? Doctor: Therein the patient Must minister to himself. Macbeth: Throw physic to the dogs; I’ll none of it.

I have liv’d long enough: my way of life Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf; And that which should accompany old age, As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have; but, in their stead, Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honor, breath, Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.

Malcolm: Dispute it like a man. Macduff: I shall do so; But I must also feel it as a man: I cannot but remember such things were, That were most precious to me.

All my pretty ones? Did you say all? O hell-kite! All? What! all my pretty chickens and their dam At one fell swoop?

Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.

What! will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?

Macbeth shall never vanquish’d be until Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill Shall come against him. 50

But yet I’ll make assurance double sure, And take a bond of fate.

Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn The power of man, for none of woman born Shall harm Macbeth.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.