1). "There 's daggers in men's smiles" (2.

3) Speaker Donalbain to Malcolm

This line is spoken by Donalbain immediately after it is discovered that King Duncan has been murdered. He and his brother Malcolm are planning to flee to seperate countries because they recognize that someone in that house had killed their father, and would probably want to kill them too. Donalbain recognizes that although everyone at Macbeth's castle seems to be friendly toward them and their father, someone obviously was hiding a 'dagger' behind their 'smile' of friendship. Since Donalbain says this line, after his father's death, it means he distrusts Macbeth's show of mourning/ sympathy. Donalbain is speaking to Malcom. Both are King Duncan's sons. Macbeth, to steer attention away from himself after murdering Duncan, has killed the grooms that had accompanied Duncan and his sons to Macbeth's castle. He falsely accuses the groomsmen of Duncan's murder. Macbeth simulates great grief but the son sees through him. This is why Donalbain cautions, "There's daggers in men's smiles." Fearing that he and his brother will suffer the same fate as his father and the groomsmen, the pair flee the country.

A SMILE IS SO DECEIVING 2). "what 's done is done" (3.2 8-12)

Lady Macbeth's soothing words are odd, to say the least, coming from a conspirator. She intends her blandishments to calm her husband, who's having more trouble than she forgetting that he murdered King Duncan. She means by "what's done, is done" exactly what we mean by it today"there's no changing the past, so forget about it." Neither then nor now is the psychology of this advice very sophisticated, but the Lady isn't trying to be profound. She's merely trying to treat Macbeth's guilty hallucinations with the blandest possible palliative. When Lady Macbeth herself succumbs to guilty dreams, she will sing the same tune, but in a different key. Sleepwalking, as has become her wont, she mutters, as if to Macbeth, "What's done cannot be undone" (Act 5, scene 1, 68).

"I dare do all that may become a man; Who dares do more is none" (1.7.46) 3). "Fair is foul, and foul is fair" (1.1.13)
Macbeth according to Wilson Knight is a study in evil and darkness. The witches are the agents of evil and foul in the play. To the witches fair and foul are same. As Satan in Milton regarded Evil as his Good, the witches too regarded foul is their fair. This is riddle and the witches speak in riddles and paradoxes as they are mysterious beings of the universe. In the very opening of the play the witches appear in storm and rain and plan to have the rendezvous with Macbeth. As the three witches leave, they chant a witchly chant: "Fair is foul, and foul is fair: / Hover through the fog and filthy air" (1.1.1112). As creatures of the night and the devil, they like whatever is "foul" and hate the "fair." So they will "hover" in the fog, and in the dust and dirt of battle, waiting for the chance to do evil. Fair is Foul and Foul is Fair" is a paradox, a statement that appears to be contadictory but actually expresses the truth. The witches are foul, but they give fair advice. Macbeth seems like a hero, but he is a plotter and dastard. It is quite interesting to note that the words of the witches will have an echo in Macbeths So foul and fair a day I have not seen. Macbeth utters these words at the very first time he enters the stage. This shows the evil connection between Macbeth and the witches. This is suggestive of the psychological depravity of Macbeth who means that the day is foul because it is stormy and fair because he has won the battle against King of Norway and Thane of Cawdor. In the use of the language of witches, Shakespeare shows a great mastery. The witches speak in Trochaic meter and Macbeth speaks in the Iambic.

4). Screw your courage to the sticking-place, And we'll not fail. (1.7.54)
Macbeth still has cold feet; he and his wife have agreed to kill King Duncan of Scotland, but he can't stop thinking of all the consequences the deed might not trammel up [see THE BE-ALL AND THE END-ALL]. Lady Macbeth, after impugning her husband's manliness, urges him, as we might say, to "screw up his courage." The OED suggests that Lady Macbeth's original words refer to the twisting of a tuning peg until it becomes set in its hole. The editor of The Riverside Shakespeare, on the other hand, suggests that a "sticking place" is "the mark to which a soldier screwed up the cord of a crossbow." Whether the metaphor is musical, martial, or otherwise, Lady Macbeth's meaning is obvious though her words are obscure: "tighten up your courage until it is fixed in the place necessary for the murder of Duncan." Lady Macbeth is trying to bolster her husband's courage because he is hesitant to kill King Duncan. He asks, "If we should fail?" This response is a pun because it offers two meanings. First, she is telling him to focus his attention ("screw your courage") on killing the king by her reference to the "sticking place," the place the knife will enter his body. "Screw your courage" can also metaphorically mean to anchor his courage as if he were taking a screw or nail to hold it in place; this place can be a "sticking place" because it will hold his courage like glue will hold something stuck to it. Above all, Lady Macbeth does not want her husband to hesitate or question the plan further. Duncan will spend only one night at Inverness; they have only one opportunity to eliminate him. Macbeth must be brave.

"Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o' the milk of human kindness" (1.5.16-17)
To Lady Macbeth, the "milk of human kindness" is distasteful stuffno self-respecting man has any use for it. Therefore, when we use the phrase to approve someone's compassion, we reverse the original sentiment. Lady Macbeth is ambitious, and fears that her milky husband lacks the mettle to grab the Scottish crown in the most expeditious manner. "The nearest way," as she sees it, is to murder King Duncan. She hatches this plotwhich had independently occurred to Macbeth as wellwhen he writes home that three witches have prophesied that he would be created "thane" (lord) of Cawdor, and later would ascend the throne. The first half of the prophecy has already come true, and Lady Macbeth is in a hurry to make sure the second half comes true too. As fluids go, Lady Macbeth is more inclined to murderous blood than nurturing milk. Later, goading the hesitant Macbeth, she insists that, if she had sworn to do it, she wouldn't have hesitated to take her own baby "while it was smiling in my face" and to "Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,/ And dash'd the brains out." A charming woman.

The quoted lines occur in Lady Macbeth's first speech, a soliloquy, in act1 sc.5. On receiving her husband's letter in which Macbeth confides to Lady Macbeth how the witches predicted about his future, Lady Macbeth is all set to play the role of a loyal wife standing by her husband's desires as endorsed by the supernatural agency. Macbeth would be the thane of Cawdor, and also the king of Scotland, but for the lack of illness in his character without which no such high ambition is materialised:
Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be

What thou art promis'd : yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o' the milk of human kindness To catch the nearest way...

This is Lady Macbeth's reading of her husband's natural self. She believes that Macbeth is all too saturated with sympathy or kindness which is, nevertheless, a human virtue. She uses the metaphor of 'milk', it being a natural health drink for man. She suspects that because of too much of human sympathy Macbeth would not be able to 'catch the nearest way' which is Lady Macbeth's euphemism for the murder of Duncan--a shortcut to the throne. Therefore she must 'chastise' him with 'the valour' of her 'tongue'.

`` You want to be powerful, and you dont lack ambition, but you dont have the mean streak that these things call for.
The things you want to do, you want to do like a good man. You dont want to cheat, yet you want what doesnt belong to you. ``

5). "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" (2.2.61)
Macbeth has come to recognize that his guilt can never be washed off, even if the blood can be washed from his hands. Instead, his guilt will poison the world around him, which he compares to an ocean. He has already begun to hallucinate: here, he imagines hands plucking out his eyes in retribution for the murder of Duncan.
Macbeth says this in Act 2, scene 2, lines 5561. He has just murdered Duncan, and the crime was accompanied by supernatural portents. Now he hears a mysterious knocking on his gate, which seems to promise doom. (In fact, the person knocking is Macduff, who will indeed eventually destroy Macbeth.) The enormity of Macbeths crime has awakened in him a powerful sense of guilt that will hound him throughout the play. Blood, specifically Duncans blood, serves as the symbol of that guilt, and Macbeths sense that all great Neptunes ocean cannot cleanse himthat there is enough blood on his hands to turn the entire sea redwill stay with him until his death. Lady Macbeths response to this speech will be her prosaic remark, A little water clears us of this deed (2.2.65). By the end of the play, however, she will share Macbeths sense that Duncans murder has irreparably stained them with blood.

6). "Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble" (4.1.10)
Three Scottish witches are going about their businesstossing poisoned entrails, eye of newt, toe of frog, and such, into a cauldronwhile awaiting a visit from the man they said would be king: Macbeth. "Double, double toil and trouble" is part of the refrain to their demonic incantation, an inspiring little number in tetrameter (four accents per line). The collective memory has clouded somewhat; often, this refrain comes to mind in the jumbled form "Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble," which makes even less sense than the original. The witches are actually trying, with their spells, to pile up toil and trouble until they "double"yielding twice the toil and double the trouble for Macbeth, presumably. The witches are conjuring up a spell on Macbeth.

7). "Out, damned spot! out, I say!" (5.1)

These words are spoken by Lady Macbeth in Act 5, scene 1, lines 3034, as she sleepwalks through Macbeths castle on the eve of his battle against Macduff and Malcolm. Earlier in the play, she possessed a stronger resolve and sense of purpose than her husband and was the driving force behind their plot to kill Duncan. When Macbeth believed his hand was irreversibly bloodstained earlier in the play, Lady Macbeth had told him, A little water clears us of this deed (2.2.65). Now, however, she too sees blood. She is completely undone by guilt and descends into madness. It may be a reflection of her mental and emotional state that she is not speaking in verse; this is one of the few moments in the play when a major charactersave for the witches, who speak in four-foot coupletsstrays from iambic pentameter. Her inability to sleep was foreshadowed in the voice that her husband thought he heard while killing the kinga voice crying out that Macbeth was murdering sleep. And her delusion that there is a bloodstain on her hand furthers the plays use of blood as a symbol of guilt. What need we fear who knows it when none can call our power to account? she asks, asserting that as long as her and her husbands power is secure, the murders they committed cannot harm them. But her guilt-racked state and her mounting madness show how hollow her words are. So, too, does the army outside her castle. Hell is murky, she says, implying that she already knows that darkness

intimately. The pair, in their destructive power, have created their own hell, where they are tormented by guilt and insanity.

8). "All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand" (5.1) "When shall we three meet again in thunder, lightning, or in rain? When the hurlyburly 's done, When the battle 's lost and won" (1.1)
With these words Macbeth begins. This dark tragedy opens with three of the most memorable characters in literature, the Weird Sisters, ugly evil hags, witches who stir their cauldron and conjure up curses and predictions ("Fair is foul and foul is fair." I, i,12). They set a brooding stage for their encounter with Macbeth, a Scottish warlord who aspires to be King. They agree to meet again later that evening on the heath which Macbeth will cross as he returns from battle. During this meeting they set into motion a course of events that will lead to Macbeth's tragic downfall. This trio of howling, shrieking witches, who cackle with glee over their evil plans, will return later in the play to complete the final marriage of chaos and murder.

9). "If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me" (1.3) Macbeth to Banquo
By "chance" (fortune), he's referring to the weird sisters' prediction that he will be king. He figures that if being king is his destiny, he doesn't have to do anything ("without my stir") to make it happen. Macbeth doesn't want to kill King Duncan, but Lady Macbeth would have him murder all of Scotland to get his crown!

Macbeth's weak defense against his imagination is the hope that if destiny ("chance") will have him to be king, then destiny will do the dirty work, and he won't have to lift a finger. Chance may crown him without his stirring in his own service. But notice the subjunctive mood of "may": chance maytake care of the business, but then again, Macbeth may still have to do it himself.

10). "Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under 't." (1.5)
a good one would be, "your hand, your tongue, look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under't". lady Macbeth says that to Mr Macbeth, she is trying to say look and be pure in the eyes of the king and his men "look like" the choice of word being like, is a simile, this tells us that Macbeth is definitely not innocent. "serpent". coming from Adam and Eve, the serpent meaning the devil, so this shows us that lady Macbeth is trying to influence him, to murdering the king. so all this shows us that lady macbeth is driving her ambition onto macbeth. the shakespearean audience would of being shocked, because at the time, they were living in a patriarchal society, meaning that men were more dominant and superior than women.
You have personification in the time quote because you are urged to flatter time and that could only be done if time were a person. There is a reverse personification there also...haven't any idea what its technical term is.... but it occurs when you are told to look like time. You could also do something with 'mask' here as you are masking yourself to look like time in order to enchant her. The flower also masks the evil presence of the snake. Personification in 'innocent' flower as only humans possess that quality. There is a subterfuge in the flower, also, as innocence is concealing the master of deceit. Nature,as in the flower and serpent, you can easily deal with.

11). "I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself, and falls on the other." (1.7)
In this soliloquy, which is found in Act 1, scene 7, lines 128, Macbeth debates whether he should kill Duncan. When he lists Duncans noble qualities (he [h]ath borne his faculties so meek) and the loyalty that he feels toward his king (I am his kinsman and his subject), we are reminded of just how grave an outrage it is for the couple to slaughter their ruler while he is a guest in their house. At the same time, Macbeths fear that [w]e still have judgement here, that we but teach / Bloody instructions which, being taught, return / To plague thinventor, foreshadows the way that his deeds will eventually come back to haunt him. The imagery in this speech is darkwe hear of bloody instructions, deep damnation, and a poisoned chaliceand suggests that Macbeth is aware of how the murder would open the door to a dark and sinful world. At the same time, he admits that his only reason for committing murder, ambition, suddenly seems an insufficient justification for the act. The destruction that comes from unchecked ambition will continue to be explored as one of the plays themes. As the soliloquy ends, Macbeth seems to resolve not to kill Duncan, but this resolve will only last until his wife returns and once again convinces him, by the strength of her will, to go ahead with their plot.

12). "Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand?" (2.1)
Macbeth has made his decision to kill the King and take the crown as his own. Inspired in part by his own ambition, the decision to murder Duncan is aided by the prophecies of the Witches as well as the insistent urging of his wife. Still, Macbeth is wracked with guilt over what he is about to do, and his mind races with thoughts of such evil action. He begins to hallucinate and sees a bloody dagger in the air, which will be his instrument of murder. He goes on to comment on the wickedness of the world, thoughts which are interrupted by the ringing of the bell, a signal from Lady Macbeth that Duncan's guards are drugged and sleeping. He goes off to complete the dire deed. Shakespeare's Macbeth is notable for hallucinations, terrifying dreams, witches, prophecies and all of the combining forces of nature which lead to chaos and murder in the gloomy countryside of Scotland. As Macbeth is walking towards Duncan's chamber to murder him, he speaks this famous soliloquy. He "sees" a dagger floating in the air pointing towards and leading the way to Duncan's room. He is wondering if this vision is real, or merely "a dagger of the mind," something created in his imagination "a false creation." He starts the monologue with one of the most famous lines from this play, "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." The heat oppressed brain speaks to Macbeths confusion on which course of action to pursue. Duncan has been a fine king and has done Macbeth no harm. However, Macbeths own ambition (brought about by the witches prophecies), coupled with the insistence of his controlling wife, is telling him to kill the King and claim the throne. Macbeth has been forced to make a very difficult decision, to kill the king or disobey his wife and own desires.

The dagger foreshadows and emphasizes the violence to come, it's appearance adds suspense to the story, and it allows us to get inside Macbeth's mind. Those dramatic elements would be lost if the dagger was not included, and the only way Shakespeare could introduce it into the play was to make it invisible to the audience and revealed through Macbeth's talking to it.

13). "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." (5.5)
Macbeth utters these words shortly after he is told that his wife, Lady Macbeth, has died. He is speaking of her life (the life of all humans, really) being fleeting and short. Our life is but a walking shadow(nothing we really see in substance until perhaps it is too late) a poor player (we are all bad actors...myself and my wife especially) that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more (we act upon the stage of life strutting and fretting and then we are gone--none of us are all that important and we are quickly and easily forgotten). It is a tale told by an idiot (the story is

told by a fool...myself included...since I was led around by my wife and encouraged by the witches) full of sound and fury (while it's being told it sounds good--full of passion, full of excitement--but once the words are uttered there isn't much too it) signifying nothing (there are many words but in the end, nothing important has been said. It is all for nothing and changes nothing).

14). False face must hide what the false heart doth know. (1.7.82)
Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have just gone over the plan to kill Duncan. Now, they have to go about business as usual without letting anyone know about their plan. The quote means that Macbeth will put on a 'false face' or pretend to look happy and normal to cover for his 'false heart' or heart that is betraying his king. This quote falls nicely into the "appearance vs reality" theme where Macbeth knows what he will do to further his ambition and become King, but he can not show this to the world or he will be called on it. "False face must hide"--put on an act and pretend to be something you are not (a mask of sorts) "what a false heart doth know"--his heart knows the truth of who he is and what he is planning

15). A falcon, towering in her pride of place, Was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed. (2.4.12) Old Man Says this to Ross
An owl has killed a mighty falcon. Ross discusses with the old man about the unnatural occurrences that have both men afraid. Nature is out of sync because of Duncan's murder. The balance between good and evil has been tipped in favor of evil with Macbeth's heinous crime against a divinely appointed king.

16). Security Is mortals' chiefest enemy. (3.5.32)

Hecate is saying that Macbeth's belief that he is untouchable will ultimately result in his downfall; his false hopes of being indestructible will be his undoing.

17). What! man; ne'er pull your hat upon your brows; Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak Whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break. (4.3.209)
This is a line from Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 3, I believe, that Malcom says to Macduff after Macduff is informed by Ross of the death of his family and it simply means that you shouldn't bottle things up because they are going grow as a burden and break you. Sharing might help. The grief that does not speak -the grief that is not shared and expressed in words Whispers the o'er-fraught heart- toys with the deeply troubled heart And bids it break- and breaks it