Quotes by Playwrights - Page 28

Friendship, according to Proust, is the negation of that irremediable solitude to which every human being is condemned.
Samuel Beckett
In the Code of Canon Law, it states clearly: 'A person who is conscious of grave sin is not to celebrate Mass or receive the body of the Lord without previous sacramental confession.' I haven’t attended confession in well over a decade, and that’s less because of dogmatic conflict than it is because of moral cowardice. Deeper than that, maybe I don’t want to be forgiven. I want to be punished. Which may be just about the most selfish, egotistical thought I’ve ever had. I’m sick with self-love. Or self-loathing. After all, they’re both essentially the same thing.
Phillip Andrew Bennett Low
No one gets up after death-there is no applause-there is only silence and some second-hand clothes, and that's death.
Tom Stoppard
They say when you are missing someone that they are probably feeling the same, but I don't think it's possible for you to miss me as much as I'm missing you right now
Edna St. Vincent Millay
This bond is forfeit And lawfully by this the Jew may claim A pound of flesh.
William Shakespeare
Disappointments are to the soul what the thunder-storm is to the air.
J. C. F. von Schiller
On these magic shores children at play are for ever beaching their coracles. We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more.
J.M. Barrie
When you know my love, my love will warm you.
Ruby Dee
Just like sweeping the streets, sweep the unnecessary things from your mind too; keep your mind clean!
Mehmet Murat ildan
The pen is the tongue of the mind.
Miguel de Cervantes
The only reason that they say, 'Women and children first' is to test the strength of the lifeboats.
Jean Kerr
I am not my body. My body is nothing without me.
Tom Stoppard
Truth in art is the unity of a thing with itself
Oscar Wilde
Thoughts -- just mere thoughts -- are as powerful as electric batteries -- as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
I was limply poking about in the garbage saying probably, for at that age I must still have been capable of general ideas, This is life.
Samuel Beckett
We see what we are only through reflection and thus the more our reflections occur, the less our mistakes will be!
Mehmet Murat ildan
We wait and think and doubt and hate. How does it make you feel? The overwhelming feeling is rage. We hate ourself for being unable to be other than what we are. Unable to be better. We feel rage. The feelings must be followed. It doesn't matter whether you're an ideologue or a sensualist, you follow the stimuli thinking that they're your signposts to the promised land. But they are nothing of the kind. What they are is rocks to navigate the past, each on your brush against, ripping you a little more open and they are always more on the horizon. But you can't face up to the that, so you force yourself to believe the bullshit of those you instinctively know are liars and you repeat those lies to yourself and to others, hoping that by repeating them often and fervently enough you'll attain the godlike status we accord those who tell the lies most frequently and most passionately. But you never do, and even if you could, you wouldn't value it, you'd realise that nobody believes in heroes any more. We know that they only want to sell us something we don't really want and keep from us what we really do need. Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe we're getting in touch with our condition at last. It's horrible how we always die alone, but no worse than living alone.
Irvine Welsh
The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?
William Shakespeare
The act of writing is the act of discovering what you believe.
David Hare
His meals were always punctual. Whether she cooked well or badly he did not know; it was a matter of total indifference to him. During his meals, which he ate at his writing desk, he was busy with important considerations. As a rule he would not have been able to say what precisely he had in his mouth. He reserved consciousness for real thoughts; they depend upon it; without consciousness, thoughts are unthinkable. Chewing and digestion happen of themselves.
Elias Canetti
When mind is so easy, body becomes so tranquil and so fearless.
Mehmet Murat ildan
O lovely Sisters! is it true That they are all inspired by you And write by inward magic charm'd And high enthusiasm warm'd?
Joanna Baillie
To what nadir of paltriness , pettiness, and squalor a man can sink! How could he change so! But is this really true to life? ---It is, it's all true to life, for anything can happen to a man. Your ardent youth of today would recoil in horror if you were to show him his own portrait as an old man. Once you set off on life's journey, once you take your leave of those gentle years of youth and enter the harsh, embittering years of manhood, remember to keep with you all your human emotions, do not leave them by the wayside, for you will not pick them up again! Grim and terrible is the old age which awaits us, and nothing does it give in return! The grave itself is more merciful than old age, for at least on the gravestone you will find written the words: 'Here a man lies buried!' but in the cold, unfeeling features of inhuman old age you can read nothing.
Nikolai Gogol
Once more and for the last time, the moon flashed above and broke into pieces, and then everything went black.
Mikhail Bulgakov
To die will be an awfully big adventure.
J.M. Barrie
Philosophy consists in moderating each life so that many lives will fit together with as much liberty and justice as will keep them together: and not so much as will make them fly apart, when the harm will be the greater.
Tom Stoppard
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
Oscar Wilde
Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.
Oscar Wilde
I had always insisted that a good education was a synthesis of book learning and involvement in social action, that each enriched the other. I wanted my students to know that the accumulation of knowledge, while fascinating in itself, is not sufficient as long as so many people in the world have no opportunity to experience that fascination.
Howard Zinn
We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.
Tennessee Williams
Only one thing to it: a strong stomach. The guts to gladhand a man you're going to stab in the back; pledge allegiance to principles you stomp on every day; righteously denounce some despot in the press and sell him arms under the table. The talent to whip up the voters' worst passions while you seem to call on their highest instincts, and the sense to stay wrapped in the flag. That's politics: I'll take the simple life.
Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais
When you lose your path, you get an opportunity to discover a world you have never known! And better worlds are often found this way! Darkness and uncertainty hide presents in itself!
Mehmet Murat ildan
The greatest events of life often leave one unmoved; they pass out of consciousness, and, when one thinks of them, become unreal. Even the scarlet flowers of passion seem to grow out in the same meadow as the poppies of oblivion. We reject the burden of their memory, and have anodynes against them. But the little things, the things of no moment, remain with us.
Oscar Wilde
(Looking at the tree) Pity we haven't got a bit of rope.
Samuel Beckett
I been talkin' with my buddy, and he thinks I'm virgin enough fer the two of us.
William Inge
For if any man thinks that he is alone is wise--that in speech, or in mind, he hath no peer--such a soul, when laid open, is ever found empty.
Sophocles
A house without security cannot be a home!
Mehmet Murat ildan
I had never read a book written by an African-American. I didn't know that black people could write books. I didn't know that blacks had done any great things. I was always conscious of my inferiority and I always remembered my place - until the Civil Rights Movement came to the town where I was born and grew up.
Endesha Ida Mae Holland
But always, to her, red and green cabbages were to be jade and burgundy, chrysoprase and prophyry. Life has no weapons against a woman like that.
Edna Ferber
Loneliness—since I was trying to escape it—was hell; and yet for the hermit who seeks it, it is apparently happiness.
Kōbō Abe
An illusionist can make himself disappear; a musician can do the same thing: When he plays a piano, after a while we start seeing only the music, not the man!
Mehmet Murat ildan
All that glisters is not gold;Often have you heard that told.Many a man his life hath soldBut my outside to behold - Gilded tombs do worms infold;Had you been as wise as bold,Young in limbs, in judgement old,Your answer had not been inscrolled - Fare you well; your suit is cold.
William Skakespeare
In any case, Cide Hamete Benengeli was a very careful historian, and very accurate in all things, as can be clearly seen in the details he relates to us, for although they are trivial and inconsequential, he does not attempt to pass over them in silence; his example could be followed by solemn historians who recount actions so briefly and succinctly that we can barely taste them, and leave behind in the inkwell, through carelessness, malice, or ignorance, the most substantive part of the work.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
One should always be in love. That's the reason one should never marry.
Oscar Wilde
I wanted so terribly to be good to him.
Dodie Smith
If you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life, then you must accept the terms it offers you.
T.S Eliot
A crust of bread and a corner to sleep in. A minute to smile and an hour to weep in. A pint of joy to a peck of trouble, And never a laugh but the moans come double. And that is life. A crust and a corner that makes love precious, With a smile to warm and tears to refresh us, And joy seems sweeter when cares come after, And a moan is the finest of foils for laughter. And that is life.
Paul Laurence Dunbar
For I hope my Friends will pardon me, when I declare, I know none of them without a Fault; and I should be sorry if I could imagine, I had any Friend who could not see mine. Forgiveness, of this Kind, we give and demand in Turn.
Henry Fielding
Every task you are given, no matter how menial, offers opportunities to observe this world at work. No detail about the people within it is too trivial. Everything you see or hear is a sign for you to decode. Over time, you will begin to see and understand more of the reality that eluded you at first. For instance, a person whom you initially thought had great power ended up being someone with more bark than bite. Slowly, you begin to see behind the appearances. As you amass more information about the rules and power dynamics of your new environment, you can begin to analyze why they exist, and how they relate to larger trends in the field. You move from observation to analysis, honing your reasoning skills, but only after months of careful attention.
Robert Greene
Our eyes are sentinels unto our judgements,And should give certain judgement what they see;But they are rash sometimes, and tell us wondersOf common things, which when our judgments find,They can then check the eyes, and call them blind.
Thomas Middleton
So far as feelings were concerned, there was no discrepancy between the very finest feeling in this world and the very worst; that their effect was the same; that no visible difference existed between murderous intent and feelings of deep compassion.
Yukio Mishima
Because art is a scream, even when it hides itself somewhere, you will find it!
Mehmet Murat ildan
You come down here to console me. That is charming of you. You find me consoled, and you are furious. How like a sympathetic person!
Oscar Wilde
To hold as 't were the mirror up to nature.
William Shakespeare
Only a man knows how a woman is supposed to act
David Henry Hwang
We can change people only by becoming their friends, not by becoming their enemies! Make friends with people so that you may be able to change them!
Mehmet Murat ildan
I have forgotten all about my school days. I have a vague impression that they were detestable.
Oscar Wilde
Beshrew your eyes,They have o'erlook'd me and divided me;One half of me is yours, the other half yours,Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours,And so all yours.
William Shakespeare
That is the injustice of a woman's lot. A woman has to bring up her children; and that means to restrain them, to deny them things they want, to set them tasks, to punish them when they do wrong, to do all the unpleasant things. And then the father, who has nothing to do but pet them and spoil them, comes in when all her work is done and stealstheir affection from her.
George Bernard Shaw
Whence but from heaven, could men unskilled in arts,In several ages born, in several parts,Weave such agreeing truths? Or how, or why, Should all conspire to cheat us with a lie?
John Dryden