Quotes by Playwrights - Page 154

Without travels, our existence, our memories, our literature, our dreams, our everything would be very poor, very boring, very limited!
Mehmet Murat ildan
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought.
Euripides
...My dad, may he rest in peace, taught me many wonderful things. And one of the things he taught me was never ask a guy what you do for a living. He said "If you think about it, when you ask a guy, what do you do you do for a living," you’re saying "how may I gauge the rest of your utterances." are you smarter than I am? Are you richer than I am, poorer than I am?" So you ask a guy what do you do for a living, it’s the same thing as asking a guy, let me know what your politics are before I listen to you so I know whether or not you’re part of my herd, in which case I can nod knowingly, or part of the other herd, in which case I can wish you dead.
David Mamet
Miss B. says, "It's a mama's faith what keeps her children right. I'm not talkin' 'bout the churchgoin' kind, neither. Miss Mabel's got faith in goodness. Tell me you can't help but believe in it too just by lookin' at her.
Ami McKay
That which costs little is less valued.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Hide nothing, for time, which sees all and hears all, exposes all.
Sophocles
A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.
Henrik Ibsen
Parents have a child, and in doing so they bring into the world a monster that kills everything it comes in contact with.
Thomas Bernhard
I am much fucking angrier than you think.
Sarah Kane
The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.
George Bernard Shaw
When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.
Tennessee Williams
Shake off this downy sleep, death’s counterfeit,And look on death itself!
William Shakespeare
How poor are they that have not patience? What wound did ever heal but by degrees?
William Shakespeare
She was at that crucial age when a women begins to regret having stayed faithful to a husband she never really loved, when the glowing sunset colors of her beauty offer her one last, urgent choice between maternal and feminine love. At such a moment a life that seemed to have chosen its course long ago is questioned once again, for the last time the magic compass needle of the will hovers between final resignation and the hope of erotic experience.
Stefan Zweig
POLONIUS My lord, the queen would speak with you, and presently.HAMLET Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?POLONIUS By th'mass, and 'tis like a camel indeed.HAMLET Methinks it is like a weasel.POLONIUS It is backed like a weasel.HAMLET Or like a whale?POLONIUS Very like a whale.HAMLET Then I will come to my mother by and by. - They fool me to the top of my bent. - I will come by and by.
William Shakespeare
He weighs the volume in his hand; this one has been the center of the whirlwind. Then DRUMMOND notices the Bible on the JUDGE's bench. He picks up the Bible in his other hand; he looks from one volume to the other, balancing them thoughtfully, as if his hands were scales. He half-smiles, half-shrugs. Then DRUMMOND slaps the two books together and jams them in his brief case, side by side. Slowly, he climbs to the street level and crosses the empty square.
Jerome Lawrence
I dont know what happens to country.
Cormac McCarthy
I am sure there is Magic in everything, only we have not sence enough to get hold of it and make it do things for us - like electricity and horses and steam.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
A people so primitive that they did not know how to get money except by working for it.
George Ade
Everyone who’s born has come from the sea. Your mother’s womb is just a sea in small. And birds come of seas on eggs. Horses lie in the sea before they’re born. The placenta is the sea. Your blood is the sea continued in your veins. We are the ocean — walking on the land.
Timothy Findley
None of us can estimate what we do when we do it from instinct.
Luigi Pirandello
And why must it always be presumed that a woman's views are based on personal considerations?
Emma Donoghue
[I]f you set out to mention everything you would never be done, and that's what counts, to be done, to have done. Oh, I know, even when you mention only a few of the things there are you do not get done either, I know, I know. But it's a change of muck. And if all muck is the same muck that doesn't matter, it's good to have a change of muck, to move from one heap to another, from time to time, fluttering you might say, like a butterfly, as if you were ephemeral.
Samuel Beckett
Can a faith that does nothing be called sincere?
Jean Racine
Language most shows a man speak that I may see thee.
Ben Jonson
We are all resigned to death: it's life we aren't resigned to.
Graham Greene
Reporters are not scientific. They do not follow scientific methods. They write to sell, not to educate. The scientist is not concerned with what sells. He is concerned with the truth. He undertakes years of painstaking study to arrive at an understanding of intricate natural processes that most people could never presume to comprehend . You would do well to listen to science and ignore the nonsense that is printed in the newspapers. Because I can tell you right now - radium has nothing to do with what's ailing you.
D.W. Gregory
(Popular singer Eddie Fisher, appearing on This is Show Business, told Kaufman that women refused to date him because he looked so young.) Mr. Fisher, on Mount Wilson there is a telescope that can magnify the most distant stars up to twenty-four times the magnification of any previous telescope. This remarkable instrument was unsurpassed in the world of astronomy until the construction of the Mount Palomar telescope, an even more remarkable instrument of magnification. Owing to advances and improvements in optical technology, it is capable of magnifying the stars to four times the magnification and resolution of the Mount Wilson telescope - Mr. Fisher, if you could somehow put the Mount Wilson telescope inside the Mount Palomar telescope, you still wouldn't be able to detect my interest in your problem.
George S. Kaufman
If music be the food of love, play on.
William Shakespeare
In time we hate that which we often fear.
William Shakespeare
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,Must give us pause
William Shakespeare
If there is a media in a country which deceives its own people, that country needs no other enemy!
Mehmet Murat ildan
I hope you have not been leading a double life pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.
Oscar Wilde
By just looking at a different direction than others, you may gain the vision of a genius because geniuses often do this!
Mehmet Murat ildan
We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.
Tennessee Williams
That is the definition of truth, it is the thing you must not say. “The miracle into which the child and the poet walk” [Tsvetaeva] as if walking home, and home is there…The thing that is both known and unknown, this is what we are looking for when we write. We go toward the most unknown and the best unknown, this is what we are looking for when we write. We go toward the best known unknown thing, where knowing and not knowing touch, where we hope we will know what is unknown. Where we hope we will not be afraid of understanding the incomprehensible, facing invisible, hearing the inaudible, thinking the unthinkable, which is of course: thinking. Thinking is trying to think the unthinkable: thinking the thinkable is not worth the effort. Painting is trying to paint what you cannot paint and writing is writing what you cannot know before you have written: it is preknowing and not knowing, blindly, with words. It occurs at the point where blindness and light meet. Kafka says—one very small line lost in his writing—“to the depths, to the depths.
Hélène Cixous
Looking for a saviour in the sky? Be serious! Know you still not that there ain’t any saviour but science! Get rid of your cultural craps and your religious illusions! Be realist! In this universe, only the realists have the chance to save themselves!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.
Oscar Wilde
It is what writers do, imagine and feel the pain of others, sometimes at the expense of feeling their own. Here, then, in these pages is mine, the fear of death, of loss, of unexpressed love. Here is the truth told in a story. And in the telling of it perhaps I have found some way to have courage, to believe.
Niall Williams
There is shadow under this red rock // (Come in under the shadow of this red rock) // And I will show you something different from either // Your shadow at morning striding behind you // Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you // I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
T.S Eliot
So oft it chances in particular menThat for some vicious mole of nature inthem—As in their birth (wherein they are not guilty,Since nature cannot choose his origin),By the o'ergrowth of some complexion,Oft breaking down the pales and forts ofreason,Or by some habit that too much o'erleavensThe form of plausive manners—that thesemen,Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect,Being nature’s livery or fortune’s star,Their virtues else (be they as pure as grace,As infinite as man may undergo)Shall in the general censure take corruptionFrom that particular fault. The dram of evilDoth all the noble substance of a doubtTo his own scandal.
William Shakespeare
Some donkeys have amazing luck.
George Bernard Shaw
In hours of bliss we oft have met:They could not always last;And though the present I regret,I'm grateful for the past.
William Congreve
An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.
Oscar Wilde
I live in an ocean of smell…
Rebecca Wells
A man with a finite life can only dream to have an infinite journey and the good news is that any dream has the potential to turn into a reality
Mehmet Murat ildan
If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?
T.S Eliot
Love's like the measles - all the worse when it comes late in life.
Douglas Jerrold
The shadow of my sorrow. Let's see, 'tis very true. My griefs lie all within and these external manners of laments are mere shadows to the unseen grief which swells with silence in the tortured soul.There lies the substance.
William Shakespeare
The Marquesa would even have been astonished to learn that her letters were very good, for such authors live always in the noble weather of their own minds and those productions which seem remarkable to us are little better than a day's routine to them.
Thornton Wilder
There were opium-dens, where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were new.
Oscar Wilde
Any closer would unravel her mystery, the very thing which made her so truly beautiful...It was her mystery that he adored. He was in love with everything that he did not know about her... No real sexual encounter could ever match the secret one that he could nurture in his imagination... No living flesh could ever be the erotic equal of flesh kept private, untouchable and unknowable
Ben Elton
Because the mankind very himself is a torturer, he created the concept of hell!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Understand: your mind is weaker than your emotions. But you become aware of this weakness only in moments of adversity,precisely the time whenyou need strength. What best equips you to cope with tthe heat of battle is neither more knowledge nor more intellect. What makes your mind stronger, and more able to control your emotions, is internal discipline and toughness.No one can teach you this skill; you cannot learn it by reading about it. Like any discipline, it can come only through practice, experience, even a little suffering. The first step in building up presence of mind is to see the need for it, to want it badly enough to be willing to work for it.
Robert Greene
Let this little book be thy friend, if, owing to fortune or through thine own fault, thou canst not find a dearer companion.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When you do your works sincerely, you put wings to your works and then they will fly all over the world on their own!
Mehmet Murat ildan
One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives.
Euripides
Crying has no potential for solving the problems!
Mehmet Murat ildan
When you're in love you never really know whether your elation comes from the qualities of the one you love, or if it attributes them to her; whether the light which surrounds her like a halo comes from you, from her, or from the meeting of your sparks.
Natalie Clifford Barney
The human race tends to remember the abuses to which it has been subjected rather than the endearments. What's left of kisses? Wounds, however, leave scars.
Bertolt Brecht