Macduff Quotes – Insight into Macduff’s Character and Role in Shakespeare’s Macbeth
Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn The power of man, for none of woman born Shall harm Macbeth.
I am not for the fashion of these times, Where none will sweat but for promotion.
Bleed, bleed, poor country! Great tyranny, lay thou thy basis sure, For goodness dare not check thee.
Why, well; never so deep Macbeth, As doth thy mortal vessel.
Hail, king! for so thou art: behold, where stands The usurper’s cursed head. The time is free.
O nation miserable, With an untitled tyrant bloody-sceptered!
Heaven hath bless’d you with a son To reign at once, discarded.
Then yield thee, coward, and live to be the show And gaze o’ the time.
He has no children. All my pretty ones? Did you say all? O hell-kite! All? What, all my pretty chickens and their dam At one fell swoop?
Turn, hellhound, turn!
I have no words; my voice is in my sword.
Thou losest labor. As easy mayst thou the intrenchant air With thy keen sword impress as make me bleed.
Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself. Within my sword’s length set him; if he ‘scape, Heaven forgive him too!
Hail, king! for so thou art: behold, where stands The usurper’s cursed head: the time is free.
The mind I sway by and the heart I bear Shall never sag with doubt nor shake with fear.
This noble passion, Child of integrity, hath from my soul Wiped the black scruples, reconciled my thoughts To thy good truth and honor.
And so, I thank you, sir: there’s no more to be said.
Would I could answer This comfort with the like! But I have words That would be howl’d out in the desert air, Where hearing should not latch them.
I’ll make assurance double sure, And take a bond of fate.
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.
The very firstlings of my heart shall be The firstlings of my hand.
When our actions do not, Our fears do make us traitors.
This avarice Sticks deeper, grows with more pernicious root Than summer-seeming lust; and it hath been The sword of our slain kings.
Despair thy charm; And let the angel whom thou still hast served Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother’s womb Untimely ripp’d.
Be large in mirth; anon we’ll drink a measure The table round.
Oh horror, horror, horror! Tongue nor heart Cannot conceive nor name thee!
The gracious Duncan Was pitied of Macbeth: marry, he was dead.
I shall do so, But I must also feel it as a man.
Thy royal father Was a most sainted king: the queen that bore thee, Oftener upon her knees than on her feet, Died every day she lived.
Good God! Betrayed!
Dispute it like a man.
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.
Fit to govern! No, not to live!
I have almost forgot the taste of fears.
But I remember now I am in this earthly world; where to do harm Is often laudable, to do good sometime Accounted dangerous folly.
Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane And thou opposed, being of no woman born, Yet I will try the last.
What you have spoke, it may be so perchance. This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues, Was once thought honest.
At least we’ll die with harness on our back.
I have no words; My voice is in my sword, thou bloodier villain Than terms can give thee out!
That wouldst thou wrongly win; thou’dst have, great Glamis, That which cries, ‘Thus thou must do, if thou have it; And that which rather thou dost fear to do Than wishest should be undone.’
Turn, hell-hound, turn!
Had I as many sons as I have hairs, I would not wish them to a fairer death: And so his knell is knoll’d.
O, never Shall sun that morrow see!
So thanks to all at once, and to each one, Whom we invite to see us crown’d at Scone.
Dispute it like a man.
I grant him bloody, Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful, Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin That has a name.
Not in the legions Of horrid hell can come a devil more damn’d In evils to top Macbeth.
Fare thee well, lord: I would not be the villain that thou think’st For the whole space that’s in the tyrant’s grasp, And the rich East to boot.
Why do you keep alone, Of sorriest fancies your companions making, Using those thoughts which should indeed have died With them they think on?
Your castle is surprised; your wife and babes Savagely slaughtered. To relate the manner Were, on the quarry of these murdered deer, To add the death of you.