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Quotes by Dramatist
"You silly Arthur! If you knew anything about...anything, which you don't, you would know that I adore you. Everyone in London knows it except you. It is a public scandal the way I adore you. I have been going about for the last six months telling the whole of society that I adore you. I wonder you consent to have anything to say to me. I have no character left at all. At least, I feel so happy that I am quite sure I have no character left at all."
16
"The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass."
16
"She lives in the poetry she cannot write."
16
"Where is Polonius? HAMLET In heaven. Send hither to see. If your messenger find him not there, seek him i' th' other place yourself. But if indeed you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby."
16
"Beatrice: I wonder that you will still be talking, Signior Benedick: nobody marks you.Benedick: What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living?"
15
"Nay, without thought or conscious desire, might not things external to ourselves vibrate in unison with our moods and passions, atom calling to atom in secret love or strange affinity?"
15
"Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, a possession for all eternity."
15
"Actors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is different. Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications. Our Guildensterns play Hamlet for us, and our Hamlets have to jest like Prince Hal. The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast."
15
"The fickleness of the woman I love is equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me."
15
"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live."
15
"I threw the pearl of my soul into a cup of wine. I went down the primrose path to the sound of flutes. I lived on honeycomb."
15
"He who does not fear death cares naught for threats."
15
"To he who avenges a father, nothing is impossible."
15
"We know now that the soul is the body, and the body the soul. They tell us they are different because they want to persuade us that we can keep our souls if we let them make slaves of our bodies."
15
"The key to education is the experience of beauty."
15
"The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone the civilized man to idols of flesh and blood."
15
"One ought to have a good memory when he has told a lie."
15
"What man really wishes to do he will find a means of doing."
15
"Why had it been left for a stranger to reveal him to himself?"
15
"For the recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses."
15
"I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, do we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that."
15
"What is the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof?-I wish I knew... Just staying on it, I guess, as long as she can..."
15
"The Lie which elates us is dearer than a thousand sober truths."
15
"I understand a fury in your wordsBut not your words."
15
"How stand I, then,That have a father killed, a mother stained,Excitements of my reason and my blood,And let all sleep, while to my shame I seeThe imminent death of twenty thousand menThat for a fantasy and trick of fameGo to their graves like beds, fight for a plotWhereon the numbers cannot try the cause,Which is not tomb enough and continentTo hide the slain? O, from this time forthMy thoughts be bloody or be nothing."
15
"There is a great deal to be said in favour of reading a novel backwards. The last page is as a rule the most interesting, and when one begins with the catastrophe or the dA©nouement one feels on pleasant terms of equality with the author. It is like going behind the scenes of a theatre. One is no longer taken in, and the hair-breadth escapes of the hero and the wild agonies of the heroine leave one absolutely unmoved. One knows the jealously guarded secret, and one can afford to smile at the quite unnecessary anxiety that the puppets of fiction always consider it their duty to display."
15
"He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career."
15
"The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech."
15
"The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post."
15
"You talk books away," he said; "why don't you write one?" "I am too fond of reading books to care to write them, Mr. Erskine. I should like to write a novel certainly, a novel that would be as lovely as a Persian carpet and as unreal."
15
"After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations."
15
"Of all matches never was the like."
15
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