Quotes by Playwrights - Page 16

Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.
George Bernard Shaw
Sleep that knits up the ravell'd slave of care The death of each day's life sore labour's bath Balm of hurt minds great nature's second course Chief nourisher in life's feast.
William Shakespeare
After all, my erstwhile dear,My no longer cherished,Need we say it was not love,Just because it perished?
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Time is the king of men.
William Shakespeare
When the wind likes a path, the weeds around that path will tremble all day long!
Mehmet Murat ildan
When you turn your back to the truth, the truth will soon appear before you!
Mehmet Murat ildan
When a man can observe himself suffering and is able later to describe what he's gone through it means he was born for literature.
Edouard Bourdet
If your country is governed by the most stupid people, it is vital for you to continue going up personally while your nation and your country is going down because your country will inevitably collapse and it will be in need of people like you, people who managed to improve themselves while everything else was falling and deteriorating!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Eva: I don't want any tea.
Lil: Don’t make me have it on my own.
Diane Samuels
Sometimes when you had nothing at all and it was raining and you were alone in the flat, it was wonderful to know that you could have something even though it was only a cup of black and bitter coffee.
Betty Smith
When I imagine changing places with her I get the feeling I do on finishing a novel with a brick-wall happy ending---I mean the kind of ending when you never think any more about the characters.
Dodie Smith
A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.
Oscar Wilde
The soul might be silent but the servant of the soul has always got a voice and it has got one for a reason.
Cormac McCarthy
O, then I see Queen Mab hath been with you. . . .She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comesIn shape no bigger than an agate stoneOn the forefinger of an alderman,Drawn with a team of little atomiAthwart men’s noses as they lie asleep.
William Shakespeare
I've lived the life of a man without teeth, he thought about it. A life of a man without teeth. I've never bitten, I've been waiting, keeping myself for later - and now I've just ascertained that I don't have teeth anymore.
Jean-Paul Sartre
To die is to be a counterfeit, for he is but the counterfeit of a man who hath not the life of a man; but to counterfeit dying when a man thereby liveth is to be no counterfeit, but the true and perfect image of life indeed.
William Shakespeare
When can you understand that the music you play is very good? It is when people look at you but see no one, no one but the music!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Anybody who thinks there's nothing wrong with this world needs to have his head examined. Just when things are going all right, without fail someone or something will come along and spoil everything. Somebody should write that down as a fundamental law of the Universe. The principle of perpetual disappointment. If there is a God who created this world, he should scrap it and try again.
Athol Fugard
We poison our lives with fear of burglary and shipwreck and ... the house is never burgled and the ship never goes down.
Jean Anouilh
All your Western theologies, the whole mythology of them, are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent
Tennessee Williams
I'm worried that students will take their obedient place in society and look to become successful cogs in the wheel - let the wheel spin them around as it wants without taking a look at what they're doing. I'm concerned that students not become passive acceptors of the official doctrine that's handed down to them from the White House, the media, textbooks, teachers and preachers.
Howard Zinn
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.
Samuel Beckett
When your life is stormy, take a refuge to a port: To music or to literature, in short, to art, to any kind of art!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Like birds leaving the dangerous places man must also leave his dangerous ideas!
Mehmet Murat ildan
He was not crying for the pain they had caused him, nor for the humiliation he had suffered when they looked at his foot, but with rage at himself because, unable to stand the torture, he had put out his foot of his own accord.
W Somerset Maugham
To him, man was a being with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a complex multiform creature that bore within itself strange legacies of thought and passion, and whose very flesh was tainted with the monstrous maladies of the dead.
Oscar Wilde
Everybody lives in this world, except lovers! They live in an isolated small place called ‘You and I’ planet!
Mehmet Murat ildan
O my love, my wife!Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breathHath had no power yet upon thy beauty.
William Shakespeare
A calm night is open to all the truths.
Mehmet Murat ildan
If you are willing to take the punishment you're halfway through the battle. That the issues may be trivial the battle ugly is another point.
Lillian Hellman
Piglet said that Tigger was very Bouncy, and that if they could think of a way of unbouncing him, it would be a Very Good Idea. "Just what I feel," said Rabbit. "What do you say, Pooh?" Pooh opened his eyes with a jerk and said, "Extremely." "Extremely what?" asked Rabbit. "What you were saying," said Pooh. "Undoubtably.
A.A. Milne
Then since we mortal lovers are,Ask not how long our love may last;But while it does, let us take careEach minute be with pleasure passed:Were it not madness to denyTo live because we're sure to die?
George Etherege
I thought I was in love with Leola, by which I meant that if I could have found her in a quiet corner, and if I had been certain that no one would ever find out, and if I could have summoned up the courage at the right moment, I would have kissed her. But, looking back on it now, I know that I was in love with Mrs Dempster. Not as some boys are in love with grown-up women, adoring them from afar and enjoying a fantasy life in which the older woman figures in an idealized form, but in a painful and immediate fashion; I saw her every day, I did menial tasks in her house, and I was charged to watch her and keep her from doing foolish things. Furthermore, I felt myself tied to her by the certainty that I was responsible for her straying wits, the disorder of her marriage, and the frail body of the child who was her great delight in life. I had made her what she was, and in such circumstances I must hate her or love her. In a mode that was far too demanding for my age or experience, I loved her.
Robertson Davies
At this hourLie at my mercy all mine enemies.
William Shakespeare
I have nothing but contempt for the kind of governor who is afraid, for whatever reason, to follow the course that he knows is best for the State.
Sophocles
We are lucky because we still have a magnificent temple called nature where we can find peace of mind in it!
Mehmet Murat ildan
As long as I have a want I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
George Bernard Shaw
Nothing disrupts dehumanization more quickly than inviting someone over, looking into their eyes, hearing their voice, and listening.
Sarah Schulman
All the great feelings like goodness, love or compassion eliminate the gravity and thus the wingless man rises like a bird.
Mehmet Murat ildan
I wish people weren't so set on being themselves, when that means being a bastard.
Robertson Davies
Unbidden guests Are often welcomest when they are gone.
William Shakespeare
Birds don't need bridges to cross precipices and honourable men with honesty wings to cross precipices of slander.
Mehmet Murat ildan
It is the storyteller's task to elicit sympathy and a measure of understanding for those who lie outside the boundaries of State approval.
Graham Greene
The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection.
Johann von Goethe
A FEATHER.A feather is trimmed, it is trimmed by the light and the bug and the post, it is trimmed by little leaning and by all sorts of mounted reserves and loud volumes. It is surely cohesive.
Gertrude Stein
The sight of a cage is only frightening to the bird that has once been caught.
Rachel Field
We know the good we apprehend it clearly. But we can't bring it to achievement.
Euripides
The ‘stream’ we call science always flows forward; sometimes reactionary beavers block its flow, but the stream is never defeated by this; it accumulates, gathers strength; its waters get over the barrage and continue on their course. The advancement of science is the advancement of God, for science is nothing but human intelligence, and human intelligence is the most valuable treasure God has bequeathed us.
Mehmet Murat ildan
In the country, especially, there are such a lot of entertaining things. I can walk over everybody's land, and look at everybody's view, and dabble in everybody's brook; and enjoy it just as much as though I owned the land--and with no taxes to pay!
Jean Webster
DestinyThe chicken I bought last night,Frozen,Returned to life,Laid the biggest egg in the world,And was awarded the Nobel Prize.The phenomenal eggWas passed from hand to hand,In a few weeks had gone all round the earth,And round the sunIn 365 days.The hen received who knows how much hard currency,Assessed in buckets of grainWhich she couldn’t manage to eatBecause she was invited everywhere,Gave lectures, granted interviews,Was photographed.Very often reporters insistedThat I too should poseBeside her.And so, having served artThroughout my life,All of a sudden I’ve attained to fameAs a poultry breeder.
Marin Sorescu
It's all that the young can do for the old to shock them and keep them up to date.
George Bernard Shaw
There is no rural life in a countryman’s dream and there is no city life in a townsman’s dream! We often dream of the other shores, not our own shore!
Mehmet Murat ildan
It seems it has been my fate to sadden those I should have made happy.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When bankers get together for dinner, they discuss Art. When artists get together for dinner, they discuss Money
Oscar Wilde
By the time the clever reaches the clouds, the genius is already on the stars.
Mehmet Murat ildan
She would know a good thing to do without thinking about it.
A.A. Milne
Where is Polonius? HAMLET t In heaven. Send hither to see. If your messenger find him not there, seek him i' th' other place yourself. But if indeed you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.
William Shakespeare
It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little. I discern great sanity in the Greek attitude. They never chattered about sunsets, or discussed whether the shadows on the grass were really mauve or not. But they saw that the sea was for the swimmer, and the sand for the feet of the runner. They loved the trees for the shadow that they cast, and the forest for its silence at noon.
Oscar Wilde
...he talked quite naturally while we ate — about the difficulty of finding words to describe the luminous mist, and why one has the desire to describe beauty."Perhaps it's an attempt to possess it," I said."Or be possessed by it; perhaps that's the same thing, really. I suppose it's the complete identification with beauty one's seeking."The mist grew brighter and brighter.
Dodie Smith
Sometimes our best speech is the way we look in silence!
Mehmet Murat ildan