Quotes by Playwrights - Page 189

Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim. It is, one is told, the unforgivable sin, but it is a sin the corrupt or evil man never practices. He always has hope. He never reaches the freezing-point of knowing absolute failure. Only the man of goodwill carries always in his heart this capacity for damnation.
Graham Greene
The Government's going to pass a bill regarding schools. Well I never. Interfering gang they are, as if a parent doesn't know what's best for her own child. I don't know, I don't know! We won't be able to call our children our own just now.
James Hanley
Tis Fate that flings the dice,And as she flingsOf kings makes peasants,And of peasants kings.
John Dryden
I was astonished, bewildered. This was America, a country where, whatever its faults, people could speak, write, assemble, demonstrate without fear. It was in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. We were a democracy...But I knew it wasn't a dream; there was a painful lump on the side of my head...The state and its police were not neutral referees in a society of contending interests. They were on the side of the rich and powerful. Free speech? Try it and the police will be there with their horses, their clubs, their guns, to stop you.From that moment on, I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of American democracy. I was a radical, believing that something fundamental was wrong in this country--not just the existence of poverty amidst great wealth, not just the horrible treatment of black people, but something rotten at the root. The situation required not just a new president or new laws, but an uprooting of the old order, the introduction of a new kind of society--cooperative, peaceful, egalitarian.
Howard Zinn
There is indeed power in words. Most of the lasting change that has been forged in the history of this world came not from a wielding of the swift and bloody sword of battle but from the shaping scalpel of ideas, and what are ideas without the words to deliver them?
Mark Dunn
Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.
William Shakespeare
So may the outward shows be least themselves:The world is still deceived with ornament.In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt,But, being seasoned with a gracious voice,Obscures the show of evil? In religion,What damned error, but some sober browWill bless it and approve it with a text,Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?There is no vice so simple but assumesSome mark of virtue on his outward parts.
William Shakespeare
Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.
Honoré de Balzac
A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public eye with his pants down.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Were such things here as we do speak about?Or have we eaten on the insane rootThat takes the reason prisoner?
William Shakespeare
I wonder if there isn't a catch about having plenty of money? Does it eventually take the pleasure out of things?
Dodie Smith
Supposing there is no life everlasting. Think what it means if death is really the end of all things. They've given up all for nothing. They've been cheated. They're dupes."Waddington reflected for a little while. "I wonder if it matters what they have aimed at is illusion. Their lives are in themselves beautiful. I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books the write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.
W Somerset Maugham
Only something extremely dire and disabling will ever stop a real writer from writing. Retirement is never an option.
Warren Adler
They say love is blind . . . and marriage is an insritution. Well I'm nor ready for an instirurion for rhe blind just yet.
Mae West
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde
This will be triumph! This will be happiness! Yea that very thing happiness which I have been pursuing all my life and have never yet overtaken.
Joanna Baillie
Poverty is a mathematical proof of the fact that mankind is a big failure!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Did you find anything special?' Blackie asked.T. nodded. 'Come over here,' he said, 'and look.' Out of both pockets he drew bundles of pound notes. 'Old Misery's savings,' he said. 'Mike ripped out the mattress, but he missed them.''What are you going to do? Share them?''We aren't thieves,' T. said. 'Nobody's going to steal anything from this house. I kept these for you and me - a celebration.' He knelt down on the floor and counted them out - there were seventy in all. 'We'll burn them,' he said, 'one by one,' and taking it in turns they held a note upwards and lit the top corner, so that the flame burnt slowly towards their fingers. The grey ash floated above them and fell on their heads like age. 'I'd like to see Old Misery's face when we are through,' T. said.'You hate him a lot?' Blackie asked.'Of course I don't hate him,' T. said. 'There'd be no fun if I hated him.' The last burning note illuminated his brooding face. 'All this hate and love,' he said, 'it's soft, it's hooey. There's only things, Blackie,' and he looked round the room crowded with the unfamiliar shadows of half things, broken things, former things. 'I'll race you home, Blackie,' he said. ("The Destructors")
Graham Greene
She told her father Mr. Abram Colhard that she did not like it at all being one being living then. He never said anything. She was afraid then, she was one needing charming stories and happy telling of them and not having that thing she was always trembling.
Gertrude Stein
Even if you enter the dirty water, stay neat like a white swan!
Mehmet Murat ildan
A man becomes trustworthy when you trust him.
Graham Greene
There are no principles; there are only events. There is no good and bad, there are only circumstances. The superior man espouses events and circumstances in order to guide them. If there were principles and fixed laws, nations would not change them as we change our shirts and a man can not be expected to be wiser than an entire nation.
Honoré de Balzac
I want everyday magic.
Christy Hall
What's that supposed to mean? A wolf's head on a stick. Big wolf barbecue tonight? Bring your own wolf?
Eoin Colfer
You must often leave your country, not necessarily physically, but mentally often! Leave your own music; leave your own religion! Leave your own culture, your own books and ideas! Walk around in the world of others, listen to what they speak and learn what they think! In short, get out of your puddle, sail to the ocean! Move, friend, move out of your country!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Two people who know they do not understand each other, breeding children whom they do not understand and who will never understand them.
T.S Eliot
It is the custom of every good mother after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things straight for next morning, repacking into their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day. If you could keep awake (but of course you can’t) you would see your own mother doing this, and you would find it very interesting to watch her. It is quite like tidying up drawers. You would see her on her knees, I expect, lingering humorously over some of your contents, wondering where on earth you had picked this thing up, making discoveries sweet and not so sweet, pressing this to her cheek as if it were as nice as a kitten, and hurriedly stowing that out of sight. When you wake in the morning, the naughtinesses and evil passions with which you went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom of your mind; and on the top, beautifully aired, are spread out prettier thoughts, ready for you to put on.
J.M. Barrie
The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
Robertson Davies
Father says hot water can be as stimulating as an alcoholic drink and though I never come by one...I can well believe it.
Dodie Smith
Adult males in modern society who feel fulfilled in giving concern and tuition to boys and youths are portrayed as being interested only in boys' bodies (though this may be a small part of the attraction) and are spurned and traduced as sexual monsters. I believe we reap the harvest of ours hysterical and homophobia today in juvenile crime, drug use and delinquency. Consider the ethical training which boys and youths gained through shudo in Japan or in the system in Classical Greece, the tuition in manners, customs and humanity, the degree of civilised values imparted to them, the ideas of loyalty, honour and truthfulness; this highly personalised education with love and sensuality at its centre must be far more effective than any other. We in the West are bigoted fools to dismiss it with such horror.
Colin Spencer
But then one regrets the loss even of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one's personality.
Oscar Wilde
I believe the way to write a good play is to convince yourself it is easy to do--then go ahead and do it with ease. Don't maul, don't suffer, don't groan till the first draft is finished. A play is a pheonix and it dies a thousand deaths. Usually at night. In the morning it springs up again from its ashes and crows like a happy rooster. It is never as bad as you think, it is never as good. It is somewhere in between, and success or failure depends on which end of your emotional gamut concerning its value it approaches more closely. But it is much more likely to be good if you think it is wonderful while you are writing the first draft. An artist must believe in himself. Your belief is contagious. Others may say he is vain, but they are affected.
Tennessee Williams
You and I may look at a banana and see a banana. If forced to come up with something more inventive to do with it, perhaps we'd mash it up, or maybe we'd dip it in chocolate, and say 'What a good boy am I.
Peter Sagal
I don't see the use of reading the same thing over and over again,' said Phillip. 'That's only a laborious form of idleness.'But are you under the impression that you have so great a mind that you can understand the most profound writer at a first reading?'I don't want to understand him, I'm not a critic. I'm not interested in him for his sake but for mine.'Why do you read then?'Partly for pleasure, because it's a habit and I'm just as uncomfortable if I don't read as if I don't smoke, and partly to know myself. When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me; I've got out of the book all that's any use to me and I can't get anythning more if I read it a dozen times. ...
W Somerset Maugham
More gates you open, more worlds you discover! More worlds you discover, more gates are opened!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Everyone likes everything nowadays. They like the television and the phonograph and the shampoo and the soda pop and the Cracker Jack. Everything becomes everything else and it's all nice and pretty and LIKABLE. Everything is fun in the sun! Where's the discernment? Where's the arbitration that separates what I LIKE from what I RESPECT, what I deem WORTHY, what has... listen to me now... SIGNIFICANCE.
John Logan
The parents exist to teach the child but also they must learn what the child has to teach them and the child has a very great deal to teach them.
Arnold Bennett
Imagination grows by exercise and contrary to common belief is more powerful in the mature than in the young.
W Somerset Maugham
Sweet meat must have sour sauce.
Ben Jonson
For everything sacred has the substance of dreams and memories, and so we experience the miracle of what is separated from us by time or distance suddenly being made tangible.
Yukio Mishima
You know those nights where the day has unfolded in such a way that now, in the night, you can feel all the gaps in your body and you can see all the reasons you’re not who you wish you were - you know those nights where the only sound is of you drinking and the people outside who have each other to drink with - those nights when you’re unable to think or be or do because of the paralyzing loneliness - it feels like a hundred of those nights - stitched together and squared - and they come to me in a blush.
Stefan Golaszewski
Every New Year must be celebrated at the heart of nature - in the middle of a forest or by the side of a lake under billions of stars - because it is nature who has made our existence possible!
Mehmet Murat ildan
A minority may be right a majority is always wrong.
Henrik Ibsen
But colonization had a nasty tendency to work its way into the DNA, the beliefs and philosophies and the very ways of life of the people being colonized.
Drew Hayden Taylor
Albeit nurtured in democracy, And liking best that state republican Where every man is Kinglike and no manIs crowned above his fellows, yet I see,Spite of this modern fret for Liberty, Better the rule of One, whom all obey, Than to let clamorous demagogues betrayOur freedom with the kiss of anarchy.Wherefore I love them not whose hands profane Plant the red flag upon the piled-up street For no right cause, beneath whose ignorant reignArts, Culture, Reverence, Honor, all things fade, Save Treason and the dagger of her trade, Or Murder with his silent bloody fee.
Oscar Wilde
He accepted the deformity which had made life so hard for him; he knew that it had warped his character, but no he saw also that by reason of it he had acquired that power of introspection which had given him so much delight. Without it he would never have had his keen appreciation of beauty, his passion for art and literature, and his interest in the varied spectacle of life. […] Then he saw that normal was the rarest thing in the world. Everyone had some defect of body or of mind […] The only reasonable thing was to accept the good of men and be patient with their faults.
W Somerset Maugham
The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I've got no mother, no wife, no kids. I had, but my mother's dead, and I lost my wife and my kids when I had my trouble. Women are bitches. It's hard for a chap to live without any affection in his life.
W Somerset Maugham
When love is not madness it is not love.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca
Out, out brief candle, life is but a walking shadow...a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
William Shakespeare
He will give the devil his due.
William Shakespeare
A life like this develops the comedy sense. You can't play tragedy while you're living it.
Edna Ferber
The reason for the unreason with which you treat my reason , so weakens my reason that with reason I complain of your beauty.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy.
Oscar Wilde
Only he who knows how to speak can be silent.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Sometimes coping with the difficulties success brings is much more difficult than coping with the difficulties failure brings!
Mehmet Murat ildan
I know the nature of women When you want to they don't want to And when you don't want to they desire exceedingly.
Terence
When one has attained a state of mind from which the evil passions of the present world have been so utterly winnowed, fear too is forgotten. Thus it was that the priest no longer could understand why Hell should exist.
Yukio Mishima
At every single moment of one's life one is going to be no less than what one has been.
Oscar Wilde
And there they ring the walls, the young, the lithe. The handsome hold the graves they won in Troy; the enemy earth rides over those who conquered.
Aeschylus