top of page
.png){kind=small}
Quotes by Playwright
"Weak minds sink under prosperity as well as adversity; but strong and deep ones have two high tides."
71
"All the mistakes I ever made were when I wanted to say 'No' and said 'Yes'."
71
"Dreams do come true, if we only wish hard enough, You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it."
70
"Public emergencies may require the hand of severity to fall heavily on those who are not personally guilty, but compassion prompts, and ever urges to milder methods."
69
"A coquette is like a recruiting sergeant, always on the lookout for fresh victims."
69
"Propaganda is a soft weapon; hold it in your hands too long, and it will move about like a snake, and strike the other way."
68
"I think it's a mistake to ever look for hope outside of one's self."
66
"We have no reliable guarantee that the afterlife will be any less exasperating than this one, have we?"
66
"A superfluity of wealth, and a train of domestic slaves, naturally banish a sense of general liberty, and nourish the seeds of that kind of independence that usually terminates in aristocracy."
66
"A large nose is the mark of a witty, courteous, affable, generous and liberal man."
65
"To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now."
65
"I didn't have a teacher like Sister Mary Ignatius."
64
"We are merely the stars tennis-balls, struck and bandied which way please them."
64
"If you greatly desire something, have the guts to stake everything on obtaining it."
64
"Without alienation, there can be no politics."
63
"Suffering is not increased by numbers. One body can contain all the suffering the world can feel."
63
"When you are forty, half of you belongs to the past... And when you are seventy, nearly all of you."
Past,
63
"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom, and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too."
62
"In tragedy every moment is eternity; in comedy, eternity is a moment."
62
"For several days after my first book was published, I carried it about in my pocket and took surreptitious peeps at it to make sure the ink had not faded."
62
"If you accept your limitations you go beyond them."
62
"He did not care upon what terms he satisfied his passion. He had even a mad, melodramatic idea to drug her."
62
"The aftermath of the war is what inspired us to write many of our plays. The whole reason for our writing Inherit the Wind was that we were appalled at the blacklisting. We were appalled at thought control."
62
"If you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith. There is always an alternative to the faith we lose. Or is it the same faith under another mask?"
62
"I know not, sir, whether Bacon wrote the works of Shakespeare, but if he did not, it seems to me that he missed the opportunity of his life."
61
"To jealousy, nothing is more frightful than laughter."
61
"I am so far as I am aware not at all influenced by dramatists, expect for Shakespeare, who I have to say, it is impossible not to be influenced by if you hold language to be the major element of theatre."
61
"Every true man, sir, who is a little above the level of the beasts and plants does not live for the sake of living, without knowing how to live; but he lives so as to give a meaning and a value of his own to life."
61
"I mean he's a very famous director... they're not going to put their... and he's very tough, he doesn't like interference at all, so he kept them at bay."
61
"I had met a young lady who wanted to be in the theater. It was Judy Holliday. She had somehow fallen down the steps of the Village Vanguard, which still exists today."
60
"A fact is like a sack - it won't stand up if it's empty. To make it stand up, first you have to put in it all the reasons and feelings that caused it in the first place."
60
"The ultimate tendency of civilization is towards barbarism."
60
"When I go to hell, I mean to carry a bribe: for look you, good gifts evermore make way for the worst persons."
60
"I shall state silences more competently than ever a better man spangled the butterflies of vertigo."
60
"The surest way to fail is not to determine to succeed."
59
"Waste brings woe, and sorrow hates despair."
59
"You know it is not my interest to pay the principal, or my principal to pay the interest."
59
"The tears stream down my cheeks from my unblinking eyes. What makes me weep so? There is nothing saddening here. Perhaps it is liquefied brain."
59
bottom of page