Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When the master has come to do everything through the slave, the slave becomes his master, since he cannot live without him.
In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language; the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.
I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.
Jesus remains unshaken as the practical man; and we stand exposed as the fools, the blunderers, the unpractical visionaries.
Nowadays a parlor maid as ignorant as Queen Victoria was when she came to the throne would be classed as mentally defective.
If 'Pygmalion' is not good enough for your friends with its own verbal music, their talent must be altogether extraordinary.
We are not taught to think decently on sex subjects, and consequently we have no language for them except indecent language.
Nothing is more dreadful than a husband who keeps telling you everything he thinks, and always wants to know what you think.
I never think of myself as wise. I think of myself as possessing a critical intelligence which I intend to allow to operate.
Only look to Jesus. He died for you, died in your place, died under the frowns of heaven, that we might die under its smile.
By the time I wrote 'Any Given Sunday' or 'Bats,' I sort of knew what my job was in terms of what a writer of dialogue does.
I grew up on the Bond movies. The first one I saw was 'Diamonds Are Forever,' when I was a kid. I just loved them to pieces.
I'm not interested in characters who aren't broken. I'm not interested in happy people. It just doesn't draw me as a writer.
Some reporter called me 'the angriest gay man in the world' or some such. Well, it stuck, but I realized it was very useful.
Once I'm on the phone, I just can't say no. I sometimes find myself doing things for three or four organizations in one day.
Many a happiness in life, as many a disaster, can be due to chance, but the peace within us can never be governed by chance.
A man with convictions finds an answer for everything. Convictions are the best form of protection against the living truth.
Show some mercy to this chair which has stretched out its arms to you for so long; please satisfy its desire to embrace you!
I feel like writing about a time when I was probably, and think all of us are, the happiest before the obligations start in.
Do you care about freedom? Dreams may have inspired it, and wishes prompted it, but only war and weapons have made it yours.
Surely, to think your own the only wisdom, and yours the only word, the only will, betrays a shallow spirit, an empty heart.
But the power of destiny is something awesome; neither wealth, nor Ares, nor a tower, nor dark-hulled ships might escape it.
The man the state has put in place must have obedient hearing to his least command when it is right, and even when it's not.
So I find words I never thought to speak In streets I never thought I should revisit When I left my body on a distant shore.
Turning Wearily, as one would turn to nod goodbye to Rochefoucauld, If the street were time and he as the end of the street.
I have a Gumbie Cat in mind, her name is Jennyanydots;Her coat is one of the tabby kind,with tiger stripes and lepard spots.
I had such a good experience doing 'The Understudy' with the Roundabout, and people were really enthusiastic about the work.
Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul.
Illusions are like umbrellas - you no sooner get them than you lose them, and the loss always leaves a little painful wound.
The audience is not the least important actor in the play and if it will not do its allotted share the play falls to pieces.
It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesthetic. - Of Human Bondage
Man, as we know him, is a poor creature; he is halfway between an ape and a god and he is travelling in the right direction.
Nothing seems so tragic to one who is old as the death of one who is young, and this alone proves that life is a good thing.
All the effort went into getting there and then I had nothing left. I thought I'd got somewhere, then I found I had to go on.
There is no such thing as a good script, onlya good film, and I'm conscious that my scripts often read better than they play.
To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less...selfish.
f they'd been working with Alec Guinness, for instance, they wouldn't have known they were born if they'd not towed the line!
I prefer silence. Then you can hear thoughts and see into the past. In silence you can’t hide anything … as you can in words.
All you need in the world is love and laughter. That's all anybody needs. To have love in one hand and laughter in the other.
Tis no sin love's fruits to steal; But the sweet thefts to reveal; To be taken, to be seen, These have crimes accounted been.
Sudden resolutions, like the sudden rise of mercury in a barometer, indicate little else than the variability of the weather.
Every scene should be able to answer three questions: "Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don't get it? Why now?"
The world no doubt is the best or most serviceable schoolmaster; but the world's curriculum does not include Latin and Greek.
If I've been accused a number of times of writing plays where the endings are ambivalent, indeed, that's the way I find life.
I think that's foolishness on the part of the playwright to write about himself. People don't know anything about themselves.
As Shakespeare himself knew, the peace, the reconciliation that he created on the stage would not last an hour on the street.
There's naught as nice as th' smell o' good clean earth, except th' smell o' fresh growin' things when th' rain falls on 'em.
Two people getting together to write a book is like three people getting together to have a baby. One of them is superfluous.
A little learning is a dangerous thing, but we must take that risk because a little is as much as our biggest heads can hold.
The philosopher is Nature's pilot. And there you have our difference: to be in hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.