Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties, they lead their country by a short route to chaos.
Someone said, 'The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.' Precisely, and they are that which we know.
Time goes by so fast. Nothin' can outrun it. Death commences too early--almost before you're half-acquainted with life--you meet the other.
New herrings, new!' we must cry, every time we make ourselves public, or else we shall be christened with a hundred new titles of idiotism.
EMILY: "Does anyone ever realize life while they live it...every, every minute?" STAGE MANAGER: "No. Saints and poets maybe...they do some.
I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.
The value of money is that with it we can tell any man to go to the devil. It is the sixth sense which enables you to enjoy the other five.
Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.
The great critic … must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.
You are a woman: you must never speak what you think; your words must contradict your thoughts, but your actions may contradict your words.
I never know if I'm the builder or architect. The role shifts all the time. But what I have come to conclude is that the script is the muse.
If you strike upon a thought that baffles you, break off from that entanglement and try another, so shall your wits be fresh to start again.
I have made more friends for American culture than the State Department. Certainly I have made fewer enemies, but that isn't very difficult.
I write the black experience in America, and contained within that experience, because it is a human experience, are all the universalities.
I dropped out of school when I was 15 years old. I dropped out because I guess I wasn't getting anything out of my investment in the school.
Nor for my peace will I go far, As wanderers do, that still do roam, But make my strengths, such as they are, Here in my bosom, and at home.
I started out wanting to be an actor and I like to give actors as much as possible. I love writing stuff where they can really lose control.
Never did she find anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when she was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book.
I am writing in the garden. To write as one should of a garden one must write not outside it or merely somewhere near it, but in the garden.
Brigham Young lived to become immortal in history as an American Moses by leading his people through the wilderness into an unpromised land.
I am justified. For I chose wisdom and the knowledge of good and evil ; and now there is no evil; and wisdom and good are one. It is enough.
Any man who is not a communist at the age of twenty is a fool. Any man who is still a communist at the age of thirty is an even bigger fool.
What shall we call this undetermin'd state, This narrow isthmus 'twixt two boundless oceans, That whence we came, and that to which we tend?
If Milosevic is to be tried, he has to be tried by a proper court, an impartial, properly constituted court which has international respect.
And once again I found myself wondering, as I drifted off to stunned and unbelieving sleep:How do these terrible things always happen to me?
A neurotic is a man who builds a castle in the air. A psychotic is the man who lives in it. A psychiatrist is the man who collects the rent.
Lord, confound this surly sister, blight her brow with blotch and blister, cramp her larynx, lung and liver, in her guts a galling give her.
The best kind of writing, and the biggest thrill in writing, is to suddenly read a line from your typewriter that you didnt know was in you.
Life is the most versatile thing under the sun; and in the pursuit of life and character the author who works in a groove works in blinkers.
Saying, 'I'm going to create jobs' is great, but before you create jobs, something has to be offered to alleviate some of the suffering now.
I always thought of my mother as a warrior woman, and I became interested in pursuing stories of women who invent lives in order to survive.
It has been rightly said that what a critic wants to understand he must, at one time, have deeply loved, even if only for a fleeting moment.
I pick and choose what I want to do at any given time, and what not to do, importantly. My agents, I won't hear about any offers or options.
Once you have the cap and gown all you need do is open your mouth. Whatever nonsense you talk becomes wisdom and all the rubbish good sense.
Watching Italian opera, all those male sopranos screeching, stupid fat couples rolling their eyes about. That's not love, it's just rubbish.
Why should man fear since chance is all in all for him, and he can clearly foreknow nothing? Best to live lightly, as one can, unthinkingly.
I don't consciously start writing a play that involves issues. After it's done, I sit back like everyone else and think about what it means.
Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The theatre is a place where one has time for the problems of people to whom one would show the door if they came to one's office for a job.
Val: Why do you go out there? Sandra: Because dead people give such good advice. Val: What advice do they give? Sandra: Just one word- live!
Riches get their value from the mind of the possessor; they are blessings to those who know how to use them, and curses to those who do not.
I think it's straight men who are oblivious to goodness or badness to dates. That's probably unfair. Maybe they just don't complain as much.
Art is great. At its best, it engages the intellect and challenges the spirit; it connects us across history and reminds us of our humanity.
Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it -- every, every minute?
Rosencrantz: I don't believe in it anyway. Guildenstern: What? Rosencrantz: England. Guildenstern: Just a conspiracy of cartographers, then?
Writing a new play shouldn't be seen as a mystery belonging to a priesthood, but as a challenge, a technical challenge, just to get into it.
Some of us look for the Way in opium and some in God, some of us in whiskey and some in love. It is all the same Way and it leads nowhither.
Art should be appreciated with passion and violence, not with a tepid, depreciating elegance that fears the censoriousness of a common room.
I'm not going to throw my imagination away. I refuse to lie down to expectation. If I can just hold out till I'm thirty, I'll be incredible.
All faith consists essentially in the recognition of a world of spiritual values behind, yet not apart from, the world of natural phenomena.