‘If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me, without my stir’

‘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.’

‘False face must hide what the false heart doth know’

‘As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs, shough, water-rugs’

‘we have scotch’d the snake, not kill’d it: she’ll close and be herself, whilst our poor malice remains in danger of her former tooth’

‘O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!’

‘Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck’

‘I am in blood stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er’

‘Strange things i have in head, that will to hand; which must be acted ere they may be scann’d’

‘the very firstlings of my heart shall be the firstling of my hand’

‘Seize upon Fife; give to the edge o’ this sword his wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls that trace him in his line. No boasting like a fool’

‘I’ll fight till from my bones my flesh be hack’d. Give me my armour’

‘I have almost forgot the taste of fears’

‘Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts cannot once scare me’

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

‘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’

‘Why should I play the Roman fool, and die on mine own sword’

‘My strange and self-abuse is that the initiate fear that wants hard use. We are yet but young in deed’