At the beginning of Act 1, Scene 7, Macbeth delivers a soliloquy in which he reveals the great many reasons he has to not kill Duncan: the violence could come back on him somehow, Duncan is his friend, his king, his kinsman, and his guest. It is Macbeth's job to shut the door against the person who would harm Duncan, not do the harm himself, he says. More than this, Duncan is a really just king and a genuinely good person; he seems like the last person in the world one would want to murder. In short, Macbeth has myriad reasons why he should not kill his king, and only one reason to go through with it: his ambition. He says, "I have no spur / To prick the sides of my intent, but only / Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself / And falls on th' other" (1.7.25-28). In other words, his ambition is the only "spur" he has to push him to go on with the plan to kill the king, but he recognizes that ambition can make people behave rashly.
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