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Quotes by Dramatist
"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;Or close the wall up with our English dead!In peace there's nothing so becomes a manAs modest stillness and humility:But when the blast of war blows in our ears,Then imitate the action of the tiger."
16
"Revolution begins in putting on bright colors."
16
"When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity."
16
"An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable."
16
"The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them."
16
"I love thee I love but thee With a love that shall not die Till the sun grows cold And the stars grow old."
16
"In England, an inventor is regarded almost as a crazy man, and in too many instances, invention ends in disappointment and poverty. In America, an inventor is honoured, help is forthcoming, and the exercise of ingenuity, the application of science to the work of man, is there the shortest road to wealth."
16
"Niagara ... is the first disappointment in the married life of many Americans who spend their honeymoon there."
16
"And the young Fisherman said to himself: "How strange a thing this is! The Priest telleth me that the Soul is worth all the gold in the world, and the merchants say that it is not worth a clipped piece of silver."
16
"Clever and attractive women do not want to vote they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men."
16
"I've been accused of having a death wish but I think it's life that I wish for, terribly, shamelessly, on any terms whatsoever."
16
"Look on beauty,And you shall see 'tis purchased by the weight;Which therein works a miracle in nature,Making them lightest that wear most of it:So are those crisped snaky golden locksWhich make such wanton gambols with the wind,Upon supposed fairness, often knownTo be the dowry of a second head,The skull that bred them in the sepulchre.Thus ornament is but the guiled shoreTo a most dangerous sea; the beauteous scarfVeiling an Indian beauty; in a word,The seeming truth which cunning times put onTo entrap the wisest."
16
"He is really not so ugly after all, provided, of course, that one shuts one's eyes, and does not look at him."
16
"You may fancy yourself safe and think yourself strong. But a chance tone of color in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play. I tell you Dorian, that it is on things like these that our lives depend."
16
"Now art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic."
16
"Let every eye negotiate for itself and trust no agent."
16
"I am so glad that you have never done anything, never carved a statue, or painted a picture, or produced anything outside of yourself! Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets."
16
"The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves."
16
"Ideals are dangerous things. Realities are better. They wound, but they're better."
16
"It is only in his work that an artist can find reality and satisfaction, for the actual world is less intense than the world of his invention and consequently his life, without recourse to violent disorder, does not seem very substantial. The right condition for him is that in which his work in not only convenient but unavoidable."
16
"To be popular one must be a mediocrity.""Not with Women," said the duchess, shaking her head; "and women rule the world. I assure you we can't bear mediocrities. We women, as someone says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes, if you ever love at all.""It seems to me that we never do anything else," murmered Dorian."
16
"An educated person's ideas of Art are drwan naturally from what Art has been, whereas the new work of art is beautiful by being what Art has never been; and to measure it by the standard of the past is to measure it by a standard on the rejection of which its real perfection depends."
16
"Die Welt ist von Narren geschaffen, damit Weise in ihr Leben."
16
"The only way to atone for being occasionally a little over-dressed is by being always absolutely over-educated."
16
"O mother, mother!What have you done? Behold, the heavens do ope,The gods look down, and this unnatural sceneThey laugh at. O my mother, mother! O!You have won a happy victory to Rome;But, for your son,--believe it, O, believe it,Most dangerously you have with him prevail'd,If not most mortal to him."
16
"To begin with, I turn back time. I reverse it to that quaint period, the thirties, when the huge middle class of America was matriculating in a school for the blind. Their eyes had failed them, or they had failed their eyes, and so they were having their fingers pressed forcibly down on the fiery Braille alphabet of a dissolving economy."
16
"Nobody could stand an eternity of Heaven."
16
"Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing."
16
"And how delightful other people's emotions were!-much more delightful than their ideas, it seemed to him. One's own soul, and the passions of one's friends-those were the fascinating things in life."
16
"My doctor says I must not have any serious conversation after seven [o'clock]. It makes me talk in my sleep."
16
"Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations."
16
"Women are never so strong as after their defeat."
16
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