Samuel Beckett Quotes

The more people I meet the happier I become.

But there are not two laws, that was the next thing I thought I understood, not two laws, one for the healthy, another for the sick, but one only to which all must bow, rich and poor, young and old, happy and sad. He was eloquent. I pointed out that I was not sad. That was a mistake. Your papers, he said, I knew it a moment later. Not at all, I said, not at all. Your papers! he cried. Ah my papers.

In reality I said nothing at all, but I heard a murmur, something gone wrong with the silence, and I pricked up my ears, like an animal I imagine, which gives a start and pretends to be dead.

With a cluther of limbs and organs, all that is needed to live again, to hold out a little time, I'll call that living, I'll say it's me, I'll get standing, I'll stop thinking, I'll be too busy, getting standing, staying standing, stirring about, holding out, getting to tomorrow, tomorrow week, that will be ample, a week will be ample, a week in spring, that puts the jizz in you.

The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.

You're on Earth. There's no cure for that.

Estragon: I remember the maps of the Holy Land. Coloured they were. Very pretty. The Dead Sea was pale blue. The very look of it made me thirsty. That's where we'll go, I used to say, that's where we'll go for our honeymoon. We'll swim. We'll be happy.

...then much, then little, then nothing.

There's never an end for the sea.

Ada: And why life? (Pause.) Why life, Henry? (Pause.) Is there anyone about?Henry: Not a living soul.Ada: I thought as much. (Pause.) When we longed to have it to ourselves there was always someone. Now that it does not matter the place is deserted.

Seen no matter how and said as seen. Dread of black. Of white. Of void. Let her vanish. And the rest. For good.

The earth makes a sound as of sighs and the last drops fall from the emptied cloudless sky. A small boy, stretching out his hands and looking up at the blue sky, asked his mother how such a thing was possible. Fuck off, she said.

Astride of a grave and a difficult birth.Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave digger puts on the forceps.We have time to grow old.The air is full of our cries.But habit is a great deadener.At me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, He is sleeping, he knows nothing.Let him sleep on.

The only sin is the sin of being born

I shall soon be quite dead at last in spite of all.

And perhaps there is none, no morrow anymore, for one who has waited so long for it in vain. And perhaps he has come to that stage of his instant when to live is to wander the last of the living in the depths of an instant without bounds, where the light never changes and the wrecks all look alike. Bluer scarcely than white of egg the eyes stare into the space before them, namely the fullness of the great deep and unchanging calm. But at long intervals they close, with the gentle suddenness of flesh that tightens, often without anger, and closes on itself.

No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found.

When I penetrate into that house, if I ever do, it will be to go on turning, faster and faster, more and more convulsive, like a constipated dog, or one suffering from worms, overturning furniture, in the midst of my family all trying to embrace me at once, until by virtue of a supreme spasm I am catapulted in the opposite direction and gradually leave backwards, without having said good evening.

You must go on.I can’t go on.I’ll go on.

It was long since I had longed for anything and the effect on me was horrible.

...The less I think of it the more certain I am.

But mostly not for nothing never quite for nothing even stillest night when air too still for even the lightest leaf to sound no not to sound to carry too still for even the lightest leaf to carry the brief way here and not die the sound not die on the brief way the wave not die away.

Perhaps after all she put me in her rectum. A matter of complete indifference to me, I needn't tell you. But is it true love, in the rectum? That's what bothers me sometimes. Have I never known true love, after all?

Memory and Habit are attributes of the Time cancer. They control the most simple Proustian episode, and an understanding of their mechanism must precede any particular analysis of their application.

But he had turned, little by little, a disturbance into words, he had made a pillow of old words, for his head.

Name, no, nothing is namable, tell, no, nothing can be told, what then, I don't know, I shouldn't have begun.

Friendship, according to Proust, is the negation of that irremediable solitude to which every human being is condemned.

I was limply poking about in the garbage saying probably, for at that age I must still have been capable of general ideas, This is life.

(Looking at the tree) Pity we haven't got a bit of rope.

We are all born mad. Some remain so.

Spend the years of learning squanderingCourage for the years of wanderingThrough a world politely turningFrom the loutishness of learning.

She was willing a little bit of sweated labour, incapable of betraying the slogan of her slavers, that since the customer or sucker was paying for his gutrot ten times what it cost to produce and five times what it cost to fling in his face, it was only reasonable to defer to his complaints up to but not exceeding fifty per cent of his exploitation.

I don’t know: perhaps it’s a dream, all a dream. (That would surprise me.) I’ll wake, in the silence, and never sleep again. (It will be I?) Or dream (dream again), dream of a silence, a dream silence, full of murmurs (I don’t know, that’s all words), never wake (all words, there’s nothing else).You must go on, that’s all I know.They’re going to stop, I know that well: I can feel it. They’re going to abandon me. It will be the silence, for a moment (a good few moments). Or it will be mine? The lasting one, that didn’t last, that still lasts? It will be I?You must go on.I can’t go on.You must go on.I’ll go on. You must say words, as long as there are any - until they find me, until they say me. (Strange pain, strange sin!) You must go on. Perhaps it’s done already. Perhaps they have said me already. Perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story. (That would surprise me, if it opens.)It will be I? It will be the silence, where I am? I don’t know, I’ll never know: in the silence you don’t know.You must go on.I can’t go on.I’ll go on.

Estragon: You see, you feel worse when I'm with you. I feel better alone, too.Vladmir: Then why do you always come crawling back?Estragon: I don't know.

And if ever I'm reduced to looking for a meaning to my life, you never can tell, it's in that old mess I'll stick my nose to begin with, the mess of that poor old uniparous whore and myself the last of my foul brood, neither man nor beast.

The tears stream down my cheeks from my unblinking eyes. What makes me weep so? There is nothing saddening here. Perhaps it is liquefied brain.

You are on your back at the foot of an aspen. In its trembling shade. She at right angles propped on her elbows head between her hands. Your eyes opened and closed have looked in hers looking in yours. In your dark you look in them again. Still. You feel on your face the fringe of her long black hair stirring in the still air. Within the tent of hair your faces are hidden from view. She murmurs, Listen to the leaves. Eyes in each other's eyes you listen to the leaves. In their trembling shade.

To be always what I am - and so changed from what I was.

drill one hole after another into [language] until that which lurks behind, be it something or nothing, starts seeping through – I cannot imagine a higher goal for today’s writer.

Lucky's monologue: "(...)the strides of physical culture the practice of sports such as tennis football running cycling swimming flying floating riding gliding conating camogie skating tennis of all kinds dying flying sports of all sorts autumn summer winter winter tennis of all kinds hockey of all sorts peniciline and succedanea in a word(...)

Curiosity is the hair of our habit tending to stand on end. It rarely happens that our attention is not stained in greater or lesser degree by this animal element.

You can't have everything, I've often noticed it.

The new light above my table is a great improvement. With all this darkness around me I feel less alone. (Pause.) In a way. (Pause.) I love to get up and move about in it, then back here to... (hesitates) ...me. (Pause.)

Personally of course I regret everything.Not a word, not a deed, not a thought, not a need,not a grief, not a joy, not a girl, not a boy,not a doubt, not a trust, not a scorn, not a lust,not a hope, not a fear, not a smile, not a tear,not a name, not a face, no time, no place...that I do not regret, exceedingly.An ordure, from beginning to end.

They love each other, marry (in order to love each other better, more conveniently). He goes to the wars, he dies at the wars. She weeps (with emotion) at having loved him, at having lost him. (Yep!) Marries again (in order to love again, more conveniently again). They love each other. (You love as many timesas necessary - as necessary in order to be happy.) He come back (the other comes back) from the wars: he didn't die at the wars after all. She goes tothe station, to meet him. He dies in the train (of emotion) at the thought of seeing her again, having her again. She weeps (weeps again, with emotionagain) at having lost him again. (Yep!) Goes back to the house. He's dead - the other is dead. The mother-in-law takes him down: he hanged himself (with emotion) at the thought of losing her. She weeps (weeps louder) at having loved him, at having lost him.

Memories are killing. So you must not think of certain things, of those that are dear to you, or rather you must think of them, for if you don’t there is the danger of finding them, in your mind, little by little.

To every man his little cross. Till he dies. And is forgotten.

Boys my age with whom, in spite of everything, I was obliged to mix occasionally, mocked me.

To have been always what I am - and so changed from what I was.

I must be happy, he said, it is less pleasant than I should have thought.

There he is then, the unfortunate brute, quite miserable because of me, for whom there is nothing to be done, and he so anxious to help, so used to giving orders and to being obeyed. There he is, ever since I came into the world, possibly at his instigation, I wouldn't put it past him, commanding me to be well, you know, in every way, no complaints at all, with as much success as if he were shouting at a lump of inanimate matter.

Be again, be again. (Pause.) All that old misery. (Pause.) Once wasn't enough for you.

Estragon: They're too bigVladimir: Perhaps you'll have socks some day

There is no use indicting words, they are no shoddier than what they peddle.

As it is with the love of the body, so with the friendship of the mind, the full is only reached by admittance to the most retired places.

Poets are the sense, philosophers­­ the intelligence­­ of humanity.

She began stroking my ankles. I considered kicking her in the cunt.

Habit is a great deadener.

And on the threshold of being no more I succeed in being another.

Nor did he think of Celia any more, though he could sometimes remember having dreamt of her. If only he had been able to think of her, he would not have needed to dream of her.