top of page
.png){kind=small}
Quotes by Playwright
"You've been brought up like a gentleman and a Christian, and I should be false to the trust laid upon me by your dead father and mother if I allowed you to expose yourself to such temptation.'Well, I know I'm not a Christian and I'm beginning to doubt whether I'm a gentleman,' said Philip."
13
"The forms are many in which the unchanging seeks relief from its formlessness."
13
"There's never an end for the sea."
13
"Well, you know when people are no good at anything else they become writers."
13
"But you do believe, don't you," Rose implored him, "you think it's true?" "Of course it's true," the Boy said. "What else could there be?" he went scornfully on. "Why," he said, "it's the only thing that fits. These atheists, they don't know nothing. Of course there's Hell. Flames and damnation," he said with his eyes on the dark shifting water and the lightning and the lamps going out above the black struts of the Palace Pier, "torments." "And Heaven too," Rose said with anxiety, while the rain fell interminably on. "Oh, maybe," the Boy said, "maybe."
13
"I am willing to take life as a game of chess in which the first rules are not open to discussion. No one asks why the knight is allowed his eccentric hop, why the castle may only go straight and the bishop obliquely. These things are to be accepted, and with these rule the game must be played: it is foolish to complain of them."
13
"It is a great danger for everyone when what is shocking changes."
13
"If only it were possible to love without injury " fidelity isn't enough: I had been faithful to Anne and yet I had injured her. The hurt is in the act of possession: we are too small in mind and body to possess another person without pride or to be possessed without humiliation. In a way I was glad that my wife had struck out at me again " I had forgotten her pain for too long, and this was the only kind of recompense I could give her. Unfortunately the innocent are always involved in any conflict. Always, everywhere, there is some voice crying from a tower."
13
"What have we all got to expect that we allow ourselves to be so lined with disappointment?"
13
"It is the storyteller's task to elicit sympathy and a measure of understanding for those who lie outside the boundaries of State approval."
13
"Men of vision. Oh, I love the fine names men give each other to hide their greed and lust for adventure."
13
"And I seemed to see myself ageing as swiftly as a day-fly. But the idea of ageing was not exactly the one which offered itself to me. And what I saw was more like a crumbling, a frenzied collapsing of all that had always protected me from all I was always condemned to be."
13
"But she wouldn't pray, she took what comfort and credit she could for not praying; it wasn't that one disbelieved in prayer; one never lost all one's belief in magic. It was that she preferred to plan, it was fairer, it wasn't loading the dice."
13
"Philip looked at his own work. How could you tell whether there was anything in it or whether you were wasting your time? It was clear that the will to achieve could not help you and confidence in yourself meantnothing."
13
"It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories."
13
"Innocence must die young if it isn't to kill the souls of men."
13
"It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it."
13
"Can the law get blood out of a stone? I haven't any money."
13
"To eat well in England you should have breakfast three times a day."
13
"She alone had been blind to his merit. Why? Because he loved her and she did not love him. What was it in the human heart that made you despise a man because he loved you?"
13
"We are all resigned to death: it's life we aren't resigned to."
13
"How strange was the relation between parents and children! When they were small the parents doted on them, passed through agonies of apprehension at each childish ailment, and the children clung to their parents with love and adoration; a few years passed, the children grew up, and persons not of their kin were more important to their happiness than father or mother. Indifference displaced the blind and instinctive love of the past. Their meetings were a source of boredom and irritation. Distracted once at the thought of a month's separation they were able now to look forward with equanimity to being parted for years."
13
"Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved."
13
"He knew that she had been dreaming that night and he knew what her dreams were about. She had forgotten them. He forebode to look at her. It gave him a grim, horrible, and rather uncanny sensation to think that a vivid, lacerating life could go on when one sunk in unconsciousness, a life so real that it could cause tears to stream down the face and twist the mouth in woe, and yet when the sleeper woke left no recollection behind."
13
"A man's work reveals him. In social intercourse he gives you the surface that he wishes the world to accept, but in his book or his picture the real man delivers himself defenceless. No affectation of peculiarity can conceal a commonplace mind. No one can produce the most casual work without disclosing the innermost secrets of his soul."
13
"Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit."
13
"Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all."
13
"When you visualized a man or a woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity . . . that was a quality God's image carried with it . . . when you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how the hair grew, it was impossible to hate. Hate was just a failure of imagination."
13
"Something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul."
13
"There's nothing so heavy as books, sir--unless it's bricks."
13
"I'll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell... their heart's in the right place, but their head is a thoroughly inefficient organ."
13
"I do not believe that I am a vindictive man, but when the immortal gods take a hand in the matter it is pardonable to observe the results with complacency."
13
"When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me."
13
"It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it."
13
"It was long since I had longed for anything and the effect on me was horrible."
12
"They ordered punch. They drank it. It was hot rum punch. The pen falters when it attempts to treat of the excellence thereof; the sober vocabulary, the sparse epithet of this narrative, are inadequate to the task; and pompous term, jewelled, exotic phrases rise to the excited fancy. It warmed the blood and cleared the head; it filled the soul with well-being; it disposed the mind at once to utter wit, and to appreciate the wit of others; it had the vagueness of music and the precision of mathematics. Only one of its qualities was comparable to anything else; it had the warmth of a good heart; but its taste, its smell, its feel, were not to be described in words."
12
"When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character."
12
"I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written."
12
"There are two good things in life - freedom of thought and freedom of action."
12
"Drinking when we are not thirsty and making love at any time, madam, is all that distinguishes us from the other animals."
12
"The influence of early books is profound. So much of the future lies on the shelves. Early reading has more influence than any religious teaching."
12
"The world in general doesn't know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger."
12
"I have always hesitated to give advice, for how can one advise another how to act unless one knows that other as well as one knows himself? Heaven knows. I know little enough of myself: I know nothing of others. We can only guess at the thoughts and emotions of our neighbours. Each one of us is a prisoner in a solitary tower and he communicates with the other prisoners, who form mankind, by conventional signs that have not quite the same meaning for them as for himself."
12
"Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered."
12
"An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones."
12
"It was like making a blunder at a party; there was nothing to do about it, it was dreadfully mortifying, but it showed a lack of sense to ascribe too much importance to it."
12
"Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five."
12
"Childhood was the germ of all mistrust. You were cruelly joked upon and then you cruelly joked. You lost the remembrance of pain through inflicting it."
12
"Then this must be my answer: We know that the attributes of God are infinite and it has always seemed strange to me that men have never given Him credit for common sense. It is hard to believe that He would have created so beautiful a world if He had not decided men to enjoy it. Would He have given the stars their glory, the birds their sweet song, and the flowers, their fragrance if He had not wished us to delight in them? I shave sinned before men and men have condemned me. God made me a man with passions of a man, and did He give them to me only that I should suppress them? He gave me my adventurous spirit and my love of life. I have a humble hope that when I am face to face with my Maker He will condone my imperfections and I shall find mercy in His sight."
12
bottom of page