Ambition

Quote

Character

Act/Scene

“This supernatural soliciting / Cannot be ill, cannot be good. If ill, / Why hath it given me earnest of success, Commencing in a truth?”

Macbeth

Act 1, Scene 3

“The Prince of Cumberland! That is a step / On 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.”

Macbeth

Act 1, Scene 4

“Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be / What thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature; / It is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness / To catch the nearest way.”

Lady Macbeth

Act 1, Scene 5

“Thou wouldst be great, / Art not without ambition, but without / The illness should attend it.”

Lady Macbeth

Act 1, Scene 5

“That I may pour my spirits in thine ear / And chastise with the valor of my tongue / All that impedes thee from the golden round”

Macbeth

Act 1, Scene 5

“To alter favour ever is to fear. / Leave all the rest to me.”

Lady Macbeth

Act 1, Scene 5

“I have no spur / To prick the sides of my intent, but only / Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself

/ And falls on the other”

Macbeth

Act 1, Scene 7

“I go, and it is done. The bell invites me. / Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell / That summons thee to heaven or to hell.”

Macbeth

Act 2, Scene 1

“Gainst nature still! Thriftless ambition, that will ravin up Thine own lives’ means! Then ‘tis most like The sovereignty will fall upon Macbeth.”

Macbeth

Act 2, Scene 4

“Thou hast it now – king, Cawdor, Glamis, all, / As the weird women promised, and I fear / Thou played’st most foully for’t.”

Banquo

Act 3, Scene 1