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Quotes by Dramatist
"There are some catastrophes that a poor writer's pen cannot describe and which he is obliged to leave to the imagination of his readers with a bald statement of the facts."
21
"I think no more than a week after I started writing I ran into the first block. It's hard to describe it in a way that will be understandable to anyone who is not a neurotic. I will try. All my life I have been haunted by the obsession that to desire a thing or to love a thing intensely is to place yourself in a vulnerable position, to be a possible, if not a probable, loser of what you most want. Let's leave it like that. That block has always been there and always will be, and my chance of getting, or achieving, anything that I long for will always be gravely reduced by the interminable existence of that block."
21
"You are perfectly right in making some slight alteration. Indeed, no woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating."
21
"MY GOD!' read Monte Cristo, 'LET ME KEEP MY MEMORY!"
21
"After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own. Music always seems to me to produce that effect. It creates for one a past of which one has been ignorant, and fills one with a sense of sorrows that have been hidden from one's tears."
21
"I'll prove the prettier fellow of the two and wear my dagger with the braver grace."
21
"Every great man nowadays has his disciples and it is always Judas who writes the biography."
21
"His principles were out of date, but there was a good deal to be said for his prejudices."
21
"The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future."
21
"A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it."
21
"To call an artist morbid because he deals with morbidity as his subject-matter is as silly as if one called Shakespeare mad because he wrote 'King Lear."
21
"I am not proud, but I am happy; and happiness blinds, I think, more than pride."
21
"Pain anguish and suffering in human life are always in proportion to the strength with which a man is endowed. We will not pretend to say that Heaven always apportions to a man's capability of endurance the anguish with which he afflicts him...Suffering is in proportion to the strength which has been accorded in other words the weak suffer more where the trial is the same than the strong."
21
"The merit of all things lies in their difficulty."
21
"Death followed by eternity the worst of both worlds. It is a terrible thought."
21
"But man, proud man,Dress'd in a little brief authority,Most ignorant of what he's most assur'd-His glassy essence-like an angry apePlays such fantastic tricks before high heavenAs makes the angels weep; who, with our spleens,Would all themselves laugh mortal."
21
"The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils."
21
"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."
21
"Valentine reposes within the walls of Paris, and to leave Paris is like losing her a second time.""Maximilian," said the count, "the friends that we have lost do not repose in the bosom of the earth, but are buried deep in our hearts, and it has been thus ordained that we may always be accompanied by them."
21
"He reads much;He is a great observer and he looksQuite through the deeds of men: he loves no plays,As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music;Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sortAs if he mock'd himself and scorn'd his spiritThat could be moved to smile at any thing.Such men as he be never at heart's easeWhiles they behold a greater than themselves,And therefore are they very dangerous."
21
"Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all."
21
"In short, the man displayed a constant and insurmountable impulse to wrap himself in a covering, to make himself, so to speak, a case which would isolate him and protect him from external influences. Reality irritated him, frightened him, kept him in continual agitation, and, perhaps to justify his timidity, his aversion for the actual, he always praised the past and what had never existed; and even the classical languages which he taught were in reality for him goloshes and umbrellas in which he sheltered himself from real life."
21
"All of life and human relations have become so incomprehensibly complex that, when you think about it, it becomes terrifying and your heart stands still."
21
"Within this restless, hurried, modern worldWe took our hearts' full pleasure - You and I,And now the white sails of our ship are furled,And spent the lading of our argosy.Wherefore my cheeks before their time are wan,For very weeping is my gladness fled,Sorrow has paled my young mouth's vermilion,And Ruin draws the curtains of my bed.But all this crowded life has been to theeNo more than lyre, or lute, or subtle spellOf viols, or the music of the seaThat sleeps, a mimic echo, in the shell."
21
"In all well-organised brains, the predominating idea-and there always is one-is sure to be the last thought before sleeping, and the first upon waking in the morning. Andrea had scarcely opened his eyes when his predominating idea presented itself, and whispered in his ear that he had slept too long."
21
"The salesman knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it."
21
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