Passages from Macbeth

What she must empty out of herself before she can do it.

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,And fill me from the crown to the toe top-fullOf direst cruelty! make thick my blood;Stop up the access and passage to remorse,That no compunctious visitings of natureShake my fell purpose, nor keep peace betweenThe effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts,And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,Wherever in your sightless substancesYou wait on nature’s mischief! Come, thick night,And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,To cry “Hold, hold!”

The mind shows him the weapon before his hand has agreed.

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, sensibleTo feeling as to sight? or art thou butA dagger of the mind, a false creation,Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?I see thee yet, in form as palpableAs this which now I draw.Thou marshall’st me the way that I was going;And such an instrument I was to use.

He asks whether an entire ocean can undo what two hands did.

Whence is that knocking?How is’t with me, when every noise appals me?What hands are here? ha! they pluck out mine eyes.Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this bloodClean from my hand? No, this my hand will ratherThe multitudinous seas in incarnadine,Making the green one red.

What a country looks like when grief becomes routine.

Alas, poor country!Almost afraid to know itself. It cannotBe call’d our mother, but our grave; where nothing,But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the airAre made, not mark’d; where violent sorrow seemsA modern ecstasy: the dead man’s knellIs there scarce ask’d for who; and good men’s livesExpire before the flowers in their caps,Dying or ere they sicken.

What it costs to want something you would hide from daylight.

The Prince of Cumberland! that is a stepOn which I must fall down, or else o’erleap,For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires;Let not light see my black and deep desires:The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be,Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.

The argument a clever man makes with himself before doing wrong.

If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere wellIt were done quickly: if the assassinationCould trammel up the consequence, and catchWith his surcease success; that but this blowMight be the be-all and the end-all here,But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,We’ld jump the life to come. But in these casesWe still have judgment here; that we but teachBloody instructions, which, being taught, returnTo plague the inventor: this even-handed justiceCommends the ingredients of our poison’d chaliceTo our own lips.

She has done nothing wrong, which is exactly what frightens her.

Whither should I fly?I have done no harm. But I remember nowI am in this earthly world; where to do harmIs often laudable, to do good sometimeAccounted dangerous folly: why then, alas,Do I put up that womanly defence,To say I have done no harm?

There is a particular tiredness that comes when horror stops working.

I have almost forgot the taste of fears:The time has been, my senses would have cool’dTo hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hairWould at a dismal treatise rouse and stirAs life were in’t: I have supp’d full with horrors;Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts,Cannot once start me.

A hungover porter decides the gate he is opening is hell's.

Here’s a knocking indeed! If a man were porter of hell-gate, he should have old turning the key. Knocking within. Knock, knock, knock! Who’s there, i’ the name of Beelzebub? Here’s a farmer, that hanged himself on the expectation of plenty: come in time; have napkins enow about you; here you’ll sweat for’t. Knocking within. Knock, knock! Who’s there, in the other devil’s name? Faith, here’s an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God’s sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven: O, come in, equivocator. Knocking within. Knock, knock, knock! Who’s there? Faith, here’s an English tailor come hither, for stealing out of a French hose: come in, tailor; here you may roast your goose. Knocking within. Knock, knock; never at quiet! What are you? But this place is too cold for hell.