15 Lady Macbeth Quotes for Evening Study to Understand Dark Ambition

Lady Macbeth is often taught as a villain and then quietly admired as a strategist—which is exactly why she is dangerous on the page. This evening-study layout tracks a single psychological through-line: persuasion → action → stain → unraveling.

What to watch while you read

Notice when she speaks in imperatives (“Come,” “Look,” “Screw your courage”). Notice when Shakespeare swaps her certainty for sensory hallucination. The play is doing ethics through sound.

A one-line thesis you can defend in class

Ambition is not only desire; it is the willingness to outsource conscience to a story that makes cruelty feel necessary.

Fifteen Lady Macbeth quotations (with play attribution)

Use these as anchors; pair each with act/scene in your edition when you write notes.

1. Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here.

2. Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under't.

3. What's done cannot be undone.

4. Out, damned spot! out, I say!

5. Here's the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.

6. The raven himself is hoarse that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements.

7. Your face, my thane, is as a book where men may read strange matters.

8. We fail? But screw your courage to the sticking-place, and we'll not fail.

9. A little water clears us of this deed.

10. My hands are of your colour; but I shame to wear a heart so white.

11. That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold.

12. Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done't.

13. Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers.

14. Yet do I fear thy nature; it is too full o' the milk of human kindness.

15. Hie thee hither, that I may pour my spirits in thine ear.

For modern political allegory after Shakespeare, see Animal Farm quotes on language and power.