Quotes by Playwrights - Page 171

Calm self-confidence is as far from conceit as the desire to earn a decent living is remote from greed.
Channing Pollock
What you do when nobody is there is your true you!
Mehmet Murat ildan
What an odd thing a stranger is. A stranger sleeping next to you. I listen to his breathing as if it were his entire life, with its hidden processes, the pulsing of the blood in the tissues, with thousands of tiny hidden decays and combustions, which together create and maintain him.
Mihail Sebastian
Put away these frozenjawed primates and their annals of ways beset and ultimate dark. What deity in the realms of dementia, what rabid god decocted out of the smoking lobes of hydrophobia could have devised a keeping place for souls so poor as is this flesh. This gawky wormbent tabernacle.
Cormac McCarthy
The liar's punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.
George Bernard Shaw
Religion has a way of making people into idiots is what my father says.
Victor Lodato
For Brutus is an honourable man So are they all all honourable men.
William Shakespeare
We can only be said to be alive in those moments, where our hearts are conscious of our treasures.
Thorton Wilder
Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds, cannot change anything.
George Bernard Shaw
It is only when one has lost all things, that one knows that one possesses it
Oscar Wilde
How many years you have to keep on doing until you know what to do and how to do!
Johann von Goethe
It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible not the invisible.
Oscar Wilde
If I were just in trousers, somehow I could go out into the world. It would make no difference whether I was naked from the waist up and my feet bare just as long as I had trousers on. Otherwise if you go walking around the streets without trousers, no matter how new your shoes and how elegant your coat, it’s enough to raise a big hue and cry. Enlightened society is a kind of trouser society.
Kōbō Abe
I wondered why it was that places are so much lovelier when one is alone. How commonplace and stupid it would be if I had a friend now, sitting beside me, someone I had known at school, who would say: “By-the-way, I saw old Hilda the other day. You remember her, the one who was so good at tennis. She’s married, with two children.” And the bluebells beside us unnoticed, and the pigeons overhead unheard. I did not want anyone with me. Not even Maxim. If Maxim had been there I should not be lying as I was now, chewing a piece of grass, my eyes shut. I should have been watching him, watching his eyes, his expression. Wondering if he liked it, if he was bored. Wondering what he was thinking. Now I could relax, none of these things mattered. Maxim was in London. How lovely it was to be alone again.
Daphne du Maurier
For all the books in his possession, he still failed to read the stories written plain as day in the faces of the people around him.
Emma Donoghue
The fog was where I wanted to be. Halfway down the path you can’t see this house. You’d never know it was here. Or any of the other places down the avenue. I couldn’t see but a few feet ahead. I didn’t meet a soul. Everything looked and sounded unreal. Nothing was what it is. That’s what I wanted—to be alone with myself in another world where truth is untrue and life can hide from itself. Out beyond the harbor, where the road runs along the beach, I even lost the feeling of being on land. The fog and the sea seemed part of each other. It was like walking on the bottom of the sea. As if I had drowned long ago. As if I was the ghost belonging to the fog, and the fog was the ghost of the sea. It felt damned peaceful to be nothing more than a ghost within a ghost.
Eugene O'Neill
Sometimes it's possible, just barely possible, to imagine a version of this world different from the existing one, a world in which there is true justice, heroic honesty, a clear perception possessed by each individual about how to treat all the others. Sometimes I swear I could see it, glittering in the pavement, glowing between the words in a stranger's sentence, a green, impossible vision--the world as it was meant to be, like a mist around the world as it is.
Ben H. Winters
It is impossible to discourage the real writers - they don't give a damn what you say, they're going to write.
Sinclair Lewis
Our fathers fought bravely. But do you know the biggest weapon unleashed by the enemy against them? It was not the Maxim gun. It was division among them. Why? Because a people united in faith are stronger than the bomb
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
He which hath no stomach to this fight, let him depart, his passport shall be made and crowns for convoy put into his purse. We would not die in that man's company that fears his fellowship, to die with us.
William Shakespeare
Life has no meaning a priori… It is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.
Jean-Paul Sartre
PORTERThis is a lot of knocking! Come to think of it, if a man were in charge of opening the gates of hell to let people in, he would have to turn the key a lot.
William Shakespeare
If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs it's just possible you haven't grasped the situation.
Jean Kerr
The way I need you is a loneliness I cannot bear
Carson McCullers
When we our betters see bearing our woes,We scarcely think our miseries our foes.
William Shakespeare
‎She was not a little girl heart-broken about him; she was a grown woman smiling at it all, but they were wet smiles.
J.M. Barrie
By the time it came to the edge of the Forest, the stream had grown up, so that it was almost a river, and, being grown-up, it did not run and jump and sparkle along as it used to do when it was younger, but moved more slowly. For it knew now where it was going, and it said to itself, “There is no hurry. We shall get there some day.” But all the little streams higher up in the Forest went this way and that, quickly, eagerly, having so much to find out before it was too late.
A.A. Milne
What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but scattered along life's pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.
Joseph Addison
Sincere wishes come true.
Mehmet Murat ildan
Men need discipline! Countries need discipline! World needs discipline! He who wants to be successful needs discipline! Be a man of discipline!
Mehmet Murat ildan
The world is a stage and the play is badly cast.
Oscar Wilde
Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.
George Bernard Shaw
A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
...as the slow sea sucked at the shore and then withdrew, leaving the strip of seaweed bare and the shingle churned, the sea birds raced and ran upon the beaches. Then that same impulse to flight seized upon them too. Crying, whistling, calling, they skimmed the placid sea and left the shore. Make haste, make speed, hurry and begone; yet where, and to what purpose? The restless urge of autumn, unsatisfying, sad, had put a spell upon them and they must flock, and wheel, and cry; they must spill themselves of motion before winter came.
Daphne du Maurier
I can't go on, I'll go on.
Samuel Beckett
It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things.
Oscar Wilde
The needle of our conscience is as good a compass as any.
Ruth Wolff
JAQUES: Rosalind is your love's name?ORLANDO: Yes, just.JAQUES: I do not like her name.ORLANDO: There was no thought of pleasing you when she was christened.
William Shakespeare
Live each day as if it were your last, for one day, you're sure to be right.
Kenneth G. Ross
In the midst of aches in the joints, anxiety over the payment of bills, concern for the safety of those you love, envy of the rich, fear of robbers, dog-weariness at the end of a long day, and the unacceptable slipping away of youth, there does occasionally appear, like a ray of light piercing the clouds, a moment of joy. Perhaps you have entered the house and sat down before removing your boots. A friend has pressed a drink into your hands, and is telling you the latest news. You see from his face that he's glad you've come in; and you are glad too. Glad to be sitting down, glad of the warming glow of the dirnk, glad of your friend's furrowed brow and eager speech. For this moment, nothing more is required. It is in its way unimprovable. This is what I mean by the Great Enough.
William Nicholson
He peeped in again to see why the music had stopped, and now he saw that Mrs. Darling had laid her head on the box, and that two tears were sitting on her eyes.'She wants me to unbar the window,' thought Peter, 'but I won't, not I!'He peeped again, and the tears were still there, or another two had taken their place.'She's awfully fond of Wendy,' he said to himself. He was angry with her now for not seeing why she could not have Wendy.The reason was so simple: 'I'm fond of her too. We can't both have her, lady.
J.M. Barrie
One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it.
Jean Cocteau
...art had no moral responsibility. Art, he argued, should strive only to be a beautiful object entirely separate from its creator.
Oscar Wilde
Love is not loveWhich alters when alteration finds,Or bends with the remover to remove:Oh, no, it is an ever-fixèd mark,that looks on tempests and is never shaken.
William Shakespeare
...that much gold, and great store of riches makes them mad, insomuch as they endeavour to destroy each other...
Margaret Cavendish
But hear thee, Gratiano:Thou art too wild, too rude, and bold of voice - Parts that become thee happily enough,And in such eyes as ours appear no faults,But where thou art not known, why, there they show Something too liberal.
William Shakespeare
A man's life is of more value than a woman's. It has larger issues, wider scope, greater ambitions. Our lives revolve in curves of emotions. It is upon lines of intellect that a man's life progresses. I have just learnt this, and much else with it, from Lord Goring. And I will not spoil your life for you, nor see you spoil it as a sacrifice to me, a useless sacrifice.
Oscar Wilde
There is, on the whole, nothing on earth intended for innocent people so horrible as a school. To begin with, it is a prison. But in some respects more cruel than a prison. In a prison, for instance, you are not forced to read books written by the warders and the governor. . . .In the prison you are not forced to sit listening to turnkeys discoursing without charm or interest on subjects that they don't understand and don't care about, and therefore incapable of making you understand or care about. In a prison they may torture your body; but they do not torture your brains.
George Bernard Shaw
If I could go back would I do it differently? Well, I can't go back.
David Mamet
Spick and span new.
Miguel de Cervantes
Now art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.
Oscar Wilde
Who apart From ourselves can see any difference between Our victories and our defeats?
Christopher Fry
MAMA: You must not dislike people ’cause they well off, honey.BENEATHA: Why not? It makes just as much sense as disliking people ’cause they are poor, and lots of people do that.
Lorraine Hansberry
You may lose your path, but you must never lose your hope, because hope is the path to all the paths!
Mehmet Murat ildan
... 'But Gold was not all. The other kings bring Frank Innocence and Mirth.' | Darcourt was startled, then delighted. 'That is very fine, Yerko; is it your own?' | 'No, it is in the story. I saw it in New York. The kings say, We bring you Gold, Frank Innocence, and Mirth.' | 'Sancta simplicitas,' said Darcourt, raising his eyes to mine. 'If only there were more Mirth in the message He has left to us. We miss it sadly, in the world we have made. And Frank Innocence. Oh, Yerko, you dear man.' ...
Robertson Davies
LEONATOWell, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband.BEATRICENot till God make men of some other metal than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered with a pierce of valiant dust? to make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl? No, uncle, I'll none: Adam's sons are my brethren; and, truly, I hold it a sin to match in my kindred.
William Shakespeare
Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.
J.M. Barrie
We must always change renew rejuvenate ourselves otherwise we harden.
Johann von Goethe
Life is short, nature is hostile, and man is ridiculous; but oddly enough most misfortunes have their compensations, and with a certain humour and a good deal of horse-sense one can make a fairly good job of what is after all a matter of very small consequence.
W Somerset Maugham
Grammar, which knows how to control even kings.
Molière