Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Let every man in mankind's frailtyConsider his last day; and let nonePresume on his good fortune until he findLife, at his death, a memory without pain.
The stubbornest of wills Are soonest bended, as the hardest iron, O'er-heated in the fire to brittleness,Flies soonest into fragments, shivered through.
To men of a certain type The suspicion that they are incapable of loving Is as disturbing to their self-esteem As, in cruder men, the fear of impotence.
The overwhelming pressure of mediocrity, sluggish and indomitable as a glacier, will mitigate the most violent, and depress the most exalted revolution.
As a writer, I have always considered it my job to describe the world as I know it; to struggle toward whatever portion of the truth is available to me.
I have two sensational kids who I have raised with my husband, hoping and working every day to help them become healthy, happy, and decent human beings.
In the theater there is often a tension, almost a contradiction, between the way real people would think and behave, and a kind of imposed dramaticness.
I didn't feel good about cutting out parts of very famous speeches, ... You think you somehow need all of it or you get none of it, but that's not true.
The idea that public safety, the safety of the innocent, is an absolute which trumps every other consideration, is tacitly abandoned in the way we live.
It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved.
Faith always contains an element of risk, of venture; and we are impelled to make the venture by the affinity and attraction which we feel in ourselves.
You always know when you're going to arrive. If you go by car, you don't. Apart from anything else, I prefer cycling. It puts you in a good mood, I find.
There are some stories you can't hear enough. They are the same every time you hear them. But you are not. That's one reliable way of understanding time.
I think growing up in a small town, the kind of people I met in my small town, they still haunt me. I find myself writing about them over and over again.
The job is to ask questions - it always was - and to ask them as inexorably as I can. And to face the absence of precise answers with a certain humility.
Data is a lot like humans: It is born. Matures. Gets married to other data, divorced. Gets old. One thing that it doesn't do is die. It has to be killed.
Now, drama is quite useful at helping us to understand what our position is and, conversely, we might then understand why our theatre is being destroyed.
Beauty is a precious trace that eternity causes to appear to us and that it takes away from us. A manifestation of eternity, and a sign of death as well.
It seems to me that we spend an inordinate amount of time and attention on fixing ourselves when we could really be directing that out to serving others.
The devastation of neoliberalism is so multi-fold, whether it's violence against women or desperate economic inequality or the destruction of the planet.
No one ever has time to examine himself honestly, and most people look no further than their neighbors' eyes, in which they may see their own reflection.
Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground, and it explodes into an oak! Bury a sheep, and nothing happens but decay.
The most sublime courage I have ever witnessed has been among that class too poor to know they possessed it, and too humble for the world to discover it.
The greatest evils and the worst of crimes is poverty; our first duty, a duty to which every other consideration should be sacrificed, is not to be poor.
He said that private practice in medicine ought to be put down by law. When I asked him why, he said that private doctors were ignorant licensed murders.
Detective, I don't know where the boyfriend is, really," I said. And it was true, considering tide, current, and the habits of marine scavengers. -Dexter
The great risk is always saying, "how will I communicate what I'm trying to get across to a room full of strangers sitting in the dark watching a stage?"
When I visited Ireland with my father and heard the people on the farm talking, I couldn't believe the gift of language they had. I felt very untalented.
An artist who is inspired is being obvious. He’s not making any decisions, he’s not weighing one idea against another. He’s accepting his first thoughts.
Art pulls a community together... Art makes you feel differently. That's what artists are doing all the time, shifting and changing the way you see life.
This is one of the glories of man, the inventiveness of the human mind and the human spirit: whenever life doesn't seem to give an answer, we create one.
Primitive peoples tried to annul death by portraying the human body--we do it by finding substitutes for the human body. Technology instead of mysticism!
I can understand, he said, that many people, many perfectly ordinary people, have an interesting story to tell. No one's experience of life is valueless.
No reason makes it right To shun accepted ways from stubborn spite; And we may better join the foolish crowd Than cling to wisdom, lonely though unbowed.
A play for me never really takes on an aspect of reality until it has left the dryair of the study and begins to sniff the musty breezes of a bare stage.
We amateur athletes are peculiarly devoted to our fitness, and our obsessions can sometimes be a burden to our loved ones and a mystery to everyone else.
I was enchanted by the escape into that meticulous world that seemed real yet not... well, it seemed not real, but very detailed and meticulous, bizarre.
People are starved for the truth, and when something comes along that even looks like the truth, people will latch onto it because everything's so false.
What is a clock? Something agreed upon and arbitrarily imposed upon us. Standard time. Not true time. Symbolizing the whole standardization of our lives.
Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm. But the harm does not interest them.
It is not enough to understand what we ought to be, unless we know what we are; and we do not understand what we are, unless we know what we ought to be.
You have to respect who the character is. It has its own internal truth, and you can't betray that. And if you don't betray that, it will not betray you.
When I was a staff writer on 'NYPD Blue,' it was truly my job to hear David Milch's voice for that show and to deliver episodes that embodied that voice.
I am convinced that, except in a few extraordinary cases, one form or another of an unhappy childhood is essential to the formation of exceptional gifts.
Here's another piece of advice, only date people who have read a different set of books than you have read, it will save you lots of time in the library.
How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pleasant to realize that to you it was only an episode.
Anyone who is considered funny will tell you, sometimes without your even asking, that deep inside they are very serious, neurotic, introspective people.
I don't much like to think that being a bachelor girl limits how you see the world. On the other hand, I know it certainly limits how the world sees you.
I have a tendency, after a play of mine is produced, to look back on it disparagingly, seeing only its faults; before production, I see only its virtues.
I always felt a bit of a nerd, but my family gets me and my oddities. My kids and partner are way cooler than I am, but they let me in the room with them.