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Quotes by Dramatist
"Nobody is worthy to be loved. The fact that God loves man shows us that in the divine order of ideal things it is written that eternal love is to be given to what is eternally unworthy. Or if that phrase seems to be a bitter one to bear, let us say that everybody is worthy of love, except him who thinks he is."
15
"Every subject's duty is the King's; but every subject's soul is his own. Therefore, should every soldier in the wars do as every sick man in his bed, wash every mote out of his conscience; and dying so, death is to him advantage; or not dying, the time was blessedly lost wherein such preparation was gained; and in him that escapes, it were no sin to think that, making God so free an offer, He let him outlive the day to see His greatness and to teach others how they should prepare."
15
"Why should you think that I should woo in scorn?Scorn and derision never come in tears:Look, when I vow, I weep; and vows so born, In their nativity all truth appears.How can these things in me seem scorn to you,Bearing the badge of faith, to prove them true?"
15
"Courage mounteth with occasion."
14
"The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself."
14
"Pasteboard pies and paper flowers are being banished from the stage by the growth of that power of accurate observation which is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it...."
14
"What fire does not destroy, it hardens."
14
"O gentle Romeo If thou dost love pronounce it faithfully. Or if thou think'st I am too quickly won I'll frown and be perverse and say thee nay So thou wilt woo: but else not for the world."
14
"There were poisons so subtle that to know their properties one had to sicken of them. There were maladies so strange that one had to pass through them if one sought to understand their nature."
14
"Were I the Moor I would not be Iago.In following him I follow but myself;Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,But seeming so for my peculiar end.For when my outward action doth demonstrateThe native act and figure of my heartIn compliment extern, 'tis not long afterBut I will wear my heart upon my sleeveFor daws to peck at. I am not what I am."
14
"Did you hear what I was playing, Lane?I didn't think it polite to listen, sir."
14
"Loyalty in a critic is corruption."
14
"To get into the best society nowadays one has either to feed people amuse people or shock people."
14
"If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first."
14
"For what is truth? In matters of religion, it is simply the opinion that has survived. In matters of science, it is the ultimate sensation. In matters of art, it is one's last mood."
14
"But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,And, constant stars, in them I read such art,As truth and beauty shall together thriveIf from thyself to store thou wouldst convert;Or else of thee I prognosticate,Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date."
14
"There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful."
14
"Security is a kind of death."
14
"Make me a willow cabin at your gateAnd call upon my soul within the house;Write loyal cantons of contemned loveAnd sing them loud even in the dead of night;Hallo your name to the reverberate hillsAnd make the babbling gossip of the airCry out "Olivia!" O, you should not restBetween the elements of air and earthBut you should pity me."
14
"Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known."
14
"I think that [William] Faulkner and I each had to escape certain particulars of our lives, and we found salvation through words. I understand the Bible story of Babel so much better now. I think that moments of extremity, desires of escape, lead us to foreign languages--not those learned in schools, but those plucked from the human heart, the searing conditions of isolation. I did not have to be limited to my biography because of words, and I shared this with Faulkner, who invented new words and punctuation and expression and worlds. He utterly reshaped the world."
14
"Besides, nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all."
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"I'll read enoughWhen I do see the very book indeedWhere all my sins are writ, and that's myself.Give me that glass and therein will I read.No deeper wrinkles yet? Hath sorrow struckSo many blows upon this face of mineAnd made no deeper wounds?O flattering glass,Like to my followers in prosperityThou dost beguile me!"
14
"Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind."
14
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