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Quotes by Dramatist
"I owe all my originality, such as it is, to my determination not to be a literary man. Instead of belonging to a literary club I belong to a municipal council. Instead of drinking and discussing authors and reviews, I sit on committees with capable practical greengrocers and bootmakers... Keep away from books and from men who get their ideas from books, and your own books will always be fresh."
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"Let them obey that know not how to rule."
17
"To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture."
17
"The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize."
17
"He hasn't an enemy in the world and none of his friends like him."
17
"When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty."
17
"Religion is a great force - the only real motive force in the world but you must get at a man through his own religion not through yours."
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"Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying."
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"I am very pleased you like my stories. They are studies in prose, put for Romance's sake into fanciful form: meant partly for children, and partly for those who have kept the childlike faculties of wonder and joy, and who find simplicity in a subtle strangeness."
17
"Don't think you can frighten me by telling me that I am alone. France is alone. God is alone. And the loneliness of God is His strength."
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"If you go to heaven without being naturally qualified for it you will not enjoy it there."
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"Conciseness is the sister of talent."
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"Art, like Nature, has her monsters."
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"It's interesting, isn't it? . . . the chandelier . . . it reminds me of mushroom soup."
17
"The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror."
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"Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes."
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"The man with toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound.The poverty stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man."
17
"A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with."
17
"Our laws make law impossible our liberties destroy all freedom our property is organized robbery our morality an impudent hypocrisy our wisdom is administered by inexperienced or mal-experienced dupes our power wielded by cowards and weaklings and our honour false in all its points. I am an enemy of the existing order for good reasons."
17
"The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it."
17
"And yet it was not the mystery, but the comedy of suffering that struck him; its absolute uselessness, its grotesque want of meaning. How incoherent everything seemed! How lacking in all harmony! He was amazed at the discord between the shallow optimism of the day, and the real facts of existence. He was still very young."
17
"LEONATOWell, then, go you into hell?BEATRICENo, but to the gate; and there will the devil meet me, like an old cuckold, with horns on his head, and say 'Get you to heaven, Beatrice, get you to heaven; here's no place for you maids:' so deliver I up my apes, and away to Saint Peter for the heavens; he shows me where the bachelors sit, and there live we as merry as the day is long."
17
"If the announcer can produce the impression that he is a gentleman he may pronounce as he pleases."
17
"I am not gamesome: I do lack some partof that quick spirit that is in Antony."
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