Quotes by Playwrights - Page 149

The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous on the contrary it makes them for the most part humble tolerant and kind. Failure makes people cruel and bitter.
W Somerset Maugham
This instant which I cannot leave, which locks me in and limits me on every side, this instant I am made of will be no more than a confused dream.
Jean-Paul Sartre
A clever quote opens new paths in the minds of the clever!
Mehmet Murat ildan
The low-tone clarinet moans. The door upstairs opens again. Stella slips down the rickety stairs in her robe. Her eyes are glistening with tears and her hair loose about her throat and shoulders. They stare at each other. Then they come together with low, animal moans. He falls to his knees on the steps and presses his face to her belly, curving a little with maternity. Her eyes go blind with tenderness as she catches his head and raises him level with her. He snatches the screen door open and lifts her off her feet and bears her into the dark flat.
Tennessee Williams
To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less...selfish.
Alan Bennett
I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Nothing in the whole world is so athirst for beauty as the soul, nor is there anything to which beauty clings so readily. There is nothing in the world capable of such spontaneous up-lifting, of such speedy ennoblement; nothing that offers more scrupulous obedience to the pure and noble command it receives.
Maurice Maeterlinck
He acts like an animal, has an animal's habits! Eats like one, moves like one, talks like one! There's even something -sub-human -something not quite to the stage of humanity yet! Yes, something - ape-like about him, like one of those pictures I've seen in - anthropological studies! Thousands and thousands of years have passed him right by, and there he is - Stanley Kowalski - survivor of the Stone Age! Bearing the raw meat home from the kill in the jungle! And you - you here - waiting for him! Maybe he'll strike you or maybe grunt and kiss you! That is, if kisses have been discovered yet! Night falls and the other apes gather! There in the front of the cave, all grunting like him, and swilling and gnawing and hulking! His poker night! - you call it - this party of apes! Somebody growls - some creature snatches at something - the fight is on! God! Maybe we are a long way from beng made in God's image, but Stella - my sister - there has been some progress since then! Such things as art - as poetry and music - such kinds of new light have come into the world since then! In some kinds of people some tendered feelings have had some little beginning! That we have got to make grow! And cling to, and hold as our flag! In this dark march towards what-ever it is we're approaching . . . Don't - don't hang back with the brutes!
Tennessee Williams
The better part of valour is discretion.
William Shakespeare
If you can remain as an atheist in a falling plane, then it means you are a real atheist!
Mehmet Murat ildan
He said it twice because he had never said it before, and it sounded funny.
A.A. Milne
Because I came to seeThat I should never have been a first-rate potter.I didn't have it in me. It's strange, isn't it, That a man should have a consuming passion To do something for which he lacks the capacity? Could a man be said to have a vocation To be a second-rate potter? To be, at best,A competent copier, possessed by the cravingTo create, when one is wholly uncreative?I don't think so. For I came to see, That I had always known, at the secret moments,That I didn't have it in me. There are occasionsWhen I am transported- a different person,Transfigured in the vision of some marvellous creation,And I feel what the man must have felt when he made it.But nothing I made ever gave me that contentment-That state of utter exhaustion and peaceWhich comes in dying to give something life...
T.S Eliot
The world is an asylum where the inmates keep the warders in their place.
George Herman
They can expect nothing but their labor for their pains.
Miguel de Cervantes
From the same window, you keep seeing the same view!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions.
Oscar Wilde
Life ... is a taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury,Signifying nothing.
William Shakespeare
What is it about me that gets them all crying? It’s not the end of the world.
Diane Samuels
Sometimes you have a little problem and you dont fix it and then all of a sudden it aint a littleproblem anymore.
Cormac McCarthy
There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Bosie has insisted on stopping here for sandwiches. He is quite like a narcissus -- so white and gold. I will come either Wednesday or Thursday night to your rooms. Send me a line. Bosie is so tired: he lies like a hyacinth on the sofa, and I worship him. (letter from Oscar Wilde, 1892 - quoted from Love in a dark time by Colm Toibin)
Oscar Wilde
Money may not buy happiness, but I'd rather cry in a Jaguar than on a bus.
Françoise Sagan
Who can stop grief's avalanche once it starts to roll.
Euripides
My master then, assuming he is solitary, in my image, wishes me well, poor devil, wishes my good, and if he does not seem to do very much in order not to be disappointed it is because there is not very much to be done or, better still, because there is nothing to be done, otherwise he would have done it, my great and good master, that must be it, long ago, poor devil. Another supposition, he has taken the necessary steps, his will is done as far as I am concerned (for he may have other protégés) and all is well with me without my knowing it. Cases one and two. I’ll consider the former first, if I can. Then I’ll admire the latter, if my eyes are still open.
Samuel Beckett
- Please. Don't switch off my mind by attempting to straighten me. Listen and understand, and when you feel contempt don't express it, at least not verbally, at least not to me.(Silence.)- I don't feel contempt.- No?- No. It's not your fault.- It's not your fault. That's all I ever hear, it's not your fault, it's an illness, it's not your fault, I know it's not my fault. You've told me that so often I'm beginning to think it is my fault.- It's not your fault.- I KNOW.- But you allow it.
Sarah Kane
Most people have no imagination. If they could imagine the sufferings of others, they would not make them suffer so. What separated a German mother from a French mother? Slogans which deafened us so that we could not hear the truth.
Ernst Toller
As Socrates so philosophically put it, since we don't know what death is, it is illogical to fear it.
Tom Stoppard
The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.
Oscar Wilde
Her blood is settled, and her joints are stiff;Life and these lips have long been separated:Death lies on her like an untimely frostUpon the sweetest flower of all the field.
William Shakespeare
Cascando"why not merely the despaired ofoccasion ofwordshedis it not better abort than be barrenthe hours after you are gone are so leadenthey will always start dragging too soonthe grapples clawing blindly the bed of wantbringing up the bones the old lovessockets filled once with eyes like yoursall always is it better too soon than neverthe black want splashing their facessaying again nine days never floated the lovednor nine monthsnor nine livessaying againif you do not teach me I shall not learnsaying again there is a lasteven of last timeslast times of begginglast times of lovingof knowing not knowing pretendinga last even of last times of sayingif you do not love me I shall not be lovedif I do not love you I shall not lovethe churn of stale words in the heart againlove love love thud of the old plungerpestling the unalterablewhey of wordsterrified againof not lovingof loving and not youof being loved and not by youof knowing not knowing pretendingpretendingI and all the others that will love youif they love youunless they love you
Samuel Beckett
Please tell me the truth about yourself.
Diane Samuels
The worst thing about being a great power is when you're not one any more. It takes centuries to get over it.
Ben Elton
It is perfectly monstrous,' he said, at last, 'the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.
Oscar Wilde
If a media is not criticizing the government, then that media is not a media but just a clown of the government!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Here lies a gentleman boldWho was so very braveHe went to lengths untold,And on the brink of the graveDeath had on him no hold.By the world he set small store--He frightened it to the core--Yet somehow, by Fate's plan,Though he'd lived a crazy man,When he died he was sane once more.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
I have more care to staythan will to go.
William Shakespeare
Winnie the Pooh finds comfort in counting his pots of honey, and Rabbit finds comfort in knowing where his relations are – even if he doesn't need them at the moment.
A.A. Milne
I know what it is to be hungry, and it is very hard when one cannot even pretend it away. -Sara
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Communists have committed great crimes but at least they have not stood aside like an established society and been indifferent. I would rather have blood on my hands than water like Pilate.
Graham Greene
Carnal embrace is the practice of throwing one's arms around a side of beef.
Tom Stoppard
For a painter, the Mecca of the world, for study, for inspiration and for living is here on this star called Paris. Just look at it, no wonder so many artists have come here and called it home. Brother, if you can't paint in Paris, you'd better give up and marry the boss's daughter.
Alan Jay Lerner
She had lost all our memories for ever, and it was as though by dying she had robbed me of part of myself. I was losing my individuality. It was the first stage of my own death, the memories dropping off like gangrened limbs.
Graham Greene
I have lost my faith, but I gained the truth! It is not important at all to lose your candle as long as you find a torch!
Mehmet Murat ildan
You like the wind? There is no wind? Start running! Create your own wind!
Mehmet Murat ildan
If women lose the right to say where and how they birth their children, then they will have lost something that's as dear to life as breathing.
Ami McKay
The suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.
Oscar Wilde
Let my heart be wise. It is the gods' best gift.
Euripides
Carnal embrace is sexual congress, which is the insertion of the male genital organ into the female genital organ for purposes of procreation and pleasure. Fermat’s last theorem, by contrast, asserts that when x, y and z are whole numbers each raised to power of n, the sum of the first two can never equal the third when n is greater than 2.
Tom Stoppard
In these dangerous times, where it seems that the world is ripping apart at the seams, we all can learn how to survive from those who stare death squarely in the face every day and [we] should reach out to each other and bond as a community, rather than hide from the terrors of life at the end of the millennium.
Jonathan Larson
But the hearts of small children are delicate organs. A cruel beginning in this world can twist them into curious shapes. The heart of a hurt child can shrink so that forever afterward it is hard and pitted as the seed of a peach. Or again, the heart of such a child may fester and swell until it is a misery to carry within the body, easily chafed and hurt by the most ordinary things.
Carson McCullers
But I had deliberately acquired the habit of closing my eyes even to such obvious assumptions, just as though I did not want to miss a single opportunity for tormenting myself. This is a trite device, often adopted by persons who, cut off from all other means of escape, retreat into the safe haven of regarding themselves as objects of tragedy.
Yukio Mishima
The heart beneath the breastbone pumping. The blood on its appointed rounds. Life in small places, narrow crannies. In the leaves, the toad's pulse. The delicate cellular warfare in a waterdrop. A dextrocardiac, said the smiling doctor. Your heart's in the right place. Weathershrunk and loveless. The skin drawn and split like an overripe fruit.
Cormac McCarthy
Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow; He who would search for pearls, must dive below.
John Dryden
because to influence a person is to give one's own soul.
Oscar Wilde
The aim of the liar is simply to charm, to delight, to give pleasure.
Oscar Wilde
Francie had heard swearing since she had heard words. Obscenity and profanity had no meaning as such among those people. They were emotional expressions of inarticulate people with small vocabularies; they made a kind of dialect. The phrases could mean many things according to the expression and tone used in saying them. So now, when Francie heard themselves called lousy bastards, she smiled tremulously at the kind man. She knew that he was really saying, “Goodbye—God bless you.
Betty Smith
Wear yourself proudly.
Christy Hall
A person who's going to be famous usually drops a few clues by the time they're twenty-one.
Frank D. Gilroy
Thus like a Captive in an Isle confin'd,Man walks at large, a Pris'ner of the Mind
John Dryden
The Sweat and the Furrow was Silas Weekley being earthly and spade-conscious all over seven hundred pages. The situation, to judge from the first paragraph, had not materially changed since Silas's last book: mother lying-in with her eleventh upstairs, father laid-out after his ninth downstairs, eldest son lying to the Government in the cow-shed, eldest daughter lying with her lover in the the hayloft, everyone else lying low in the barn. The rain dripped from the thatch, and the manure steamed in the midden. Silas never omitted the manure. It was not Silas's fault that its steam provided the only uprising element in the picture. If Silas could have discovered a brand of steam that steamed downwards, Silas would have introduced it.
Josephine Tey