Quotes by Playwrights

The State is not God. It has not the right to take away what it cannot restore when it wants to.
Anton Chekhov
Mortal fate is hard. You'd best get used to it.
Euripides
No one is happy all his life long.
Euripides
Never have a friend that's poorer than yourself.
Douglas Jerrold
Sadly, it is within the religious domain that the phenomenon of rhetorical hysteria takes its most devastating form. I am aware that, in some minds, this tends to be regarded as a delicate subject. Let me declare very simply that I do not share such a sentiment. There is nothing in the least delicate about the slaughter of innocents. We all subscribe to the lofty notions contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but, for some reason, become suddenly coy and selective when it comes to defending what is obviously the most elementary of these rights, which is the right to life. One of my all-time favourite lines comes from the black American poet Langston Hughes. It reads, simply, 'There is no lavender word for lynch'.
Wole Soyinka
You will face yourself again in a moment of terror and will learn once again that old lesson you keep forgetting: that you can escape from anywhere, but you cannot flee your own self.
Mihail Sebastian
But what is your life? Can you see it? It vanishes at its own appearance. Moment by moment. Until it vanishes to appear no more. When you look at the world is there a point in time when the seen becomes the remembered? How are they separate? It is that which we have no way o show. It is that which is missing from our map and from the picture that it makes. And yet is all we have.
Cormac McCarthy
For the bored souls, sometimes sea is the best answer!
Mehmet Murat ildan
When you take pictures of nature with passion, nature poses for you more passionately!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Tis time to die, when 'tis a shame to live.
Thomas Middleton
I walked up the stairs and hesitated at the open door.
Susan Hill
She was crude, but loyal. He began to understand her even better than before. A pity she was so old; it was too late to try to make a human being of her.
Elias Canetti
In low intelligent ignorant societies, the clever are denigrated and the stupid are belauded; the brainy are stoned and the dull are held in high esteem!
Mehmet Murat ildan
We have to distrust each other. It is our only defence against betrayal.
Tennessee Williams
The years are going by us like huge birds, whom Doom and Destiny and the schemes of God have frightened up out of some old gray marsh.
Lord Dunsany
Don’t perceive the facts as a false criticism or else you lose badly! Because facts are facts and they need to be respected and be taken into consideration promptly!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Some politicians are much noisier than the dogs! Just like teaching a dog how to hush, public must likewise teach those politicians to shush!
Mehmet Murat ildan
The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is.
Oscar Wilde
An African who loses the ability to die with dignity is a lost man.
Henning Mankell
Character? I should have thought it needed a good deal of character to throw up a career after half an hour’s meditation, because you saw in another way of living a more intense significance. And it required still more character never to regret the sudden step. I wondered if Abraham really had made a hash of life. Is to do what you most want, to live under the conditions that please you, in peace with yourself, to make a hash of life; and is it success to be an eminent surgeon with ten thousand a year and a beautiful wife? I suppose it depends on what meaning you attach to life, the claim which you acknowledge to society, and the claim of the individual. But again I held my tongue, for who am I to argue with a knight?
W Somerset Maugham
Just forget for a minute that you have spectacles on your nose and autumn in your heart. Stop being tough at your desk and stammering with timidity in the presence of people. Imagine for one second that you raise hell in public and stammer on paper. You’re a tiger, a lion, a cat. You spend a night with a Russian woman and leave her satisfied. You’re twenty five. If rings had been fastened to the earth and sky, you’d have seized them and pulled the sky down to earth
Isaac Babel
For a clever man, different cultures, different lives, different attitudes, different dreams, different of everything are a good teacher! You only take the things you already know from somebody or something like you!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Every time a stupid politician says something stupid, you don’t have to reply to him, because it is nonsense to shoo every barking dog away!
Mehmet Murat ildan
A country where there is no security of life is certainly not a country but just a slaughter house!
Mehmet Murat ildan
To reach your target quicker, don’t lose your time by looking back!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Storm will never take you in consideration whether you take the storm in consideration or not!
Mehmet Murat ildan
The uncertainty of the future is a great blessing for us humans! Let the road ahead of us be completely unknown for us so that we can have the marvellous joy of discovering it!
Mehmet Murat ildan
The path to tranquility gets through the storms!
Mehmet Murat ildan
NOW is a fact that cannot be dodged.
Sinclair Lewis
Isn't it fun to work— or don't you ever do it? It's especially fun when your kind of work is the thing you'd rather do more than anything else in the world. I've been writing as fast as my pen would go every day this summer, and my only quarrel with life is that the days aren't long enough to write all the beautiful and valuable and entertaining thoughts I'm thinking. I've finished the second draft of my book and am going to begin the third tomorrow morning at half-past seven. It's the sweetest book you ever saw— it is, truly. I think of nothing else. I can barely wait in the morning to dress and eat before beginning; then I write and write and write till suddenly I'm so tired that I'm limp all over.
Jean Webster
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN: … But may I ask, at heart, are you an optimist or a pessimist? Those seem to be the only two fashionable religions left to us nowadays.MRS CHEVELEY: Oh, I'm neither. Optimism begins in a broad grin, and Pessimism ends with blue spectacles. Besides, they are both of them merely poses.SIR ROBERT CHILTERN: You prefer to be natural?MRS CHEVELEY: Sometimes. But it is such a very difficult pose to keep up.(Act I., lines 132-140)
Oscar Wilde
We belong far less to where we've come from than where we want to go.
Franz Werfel
To attack terrorism, firstly attack the ignorance which is the greatest source of terrorism! Attack the ignorance worldwide because ignorance often creates sick minds!
Mehmet Murat ildan
To spend one's life being angry, and in the process doing nothing to change it, is to me ridiculous. I could be mad all day long, but if I'm not doing a damn thing, what difference does it make?
Charles Fuller
The man I am writing about is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water.
W Somerset Maugham
When peoples cry for you, they can straighten out your soul.
Langston Hughes
The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination,made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain,danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks.
Oscar Wilde
When modern values and modern people are under attack in a country, we can be sure of a dark future in that country!
Mehmet Murat ildan
What infinite heart's-easeMust kings neglect, that private men enjoy!And what have kings, that privates have not too,Save ceremony, save general ceremony?And what art thou, thou idle ceremony?What kind of god art thou, that suffer'st moreOf mortal griefs than do thy worshippers?What are thy rents? what are thy comings in?O ceremony, show me but thy worth!What is thy soul of adoration?Art thou aught else but place, degree and form,Creating awe and fear in other men?Wherein thou art less happy being fear'dThan they in fearing.What drink'st thou oft, instead of homage sweet,But poison'd flattery? O, be sick, great greatness,And bid thy ceremony give thee cure!Think'st thou the fiery fever will go outWith titles blown from adulation?Will it give place to flexure and low bending?Canst thou, when thou command'st the beggar's knee,Command the health of it? No, thou proud dream,That play'st so subtly with a king's repose;I am a king that find thee, and I know'Tis not the balm, the sceptre and the ball,The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,The intertissued robe of gold and pearl,The farced title running 'fore the king,The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pompThat beats upon the high shore of this world,No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony,Not all these, laid in bed majestical,Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave,Who with a body fill'd and vacant mindGets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread;Never sees horrid night, the child of hell,But, like a lackey, from the rise to setSweats in the eye of Phoebus and all nightSleeps in Elysium; next day after dawn,Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse,And follows so the ever-running year,With profitable labour, to his grave:And, but for ceremony, such a wretch,Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep,Had the fore-hand and vantage of a king.The slave, a member of the country's peace,Enjoys it; but in gross brain little wotsWhat watch the king keeps to maintain the peace,Whose hours the peasant best advantages.
William Shakespeare
The strength of your mind determines the depth of your desperation! The weaker the mind, the deeper the desperation!
Mehmet Murat ildan
My schooling not only failed to teach me what it professed to be teaching, but prevented me from being educated to an extent which infuriates me when I think of all I might have learned at home by myself.
George Bernard Shaw
The heart beneath the breastbone pumping. The blood on its appointed rounds. Life in small places, narrow crannies. In the leaves, the toad's pulse. The delicate cellular warfare in a waterdrop. A dextrocardiac, said the smiling doctor. Your heart's in the right place. Weathershrunk and loveless. The skin drawn and split like an overripe fruit.
Cormac McCarthy
No ornament can make a person look beautiful if the person has a bad heart! A good heart is the finest ornament, the best makeup, the best cloth, the best jewel, the best lipstick and the best earring!
Mehmet Murat ildan
A candle, a book and a peaceful person mean three candles for the world!
Mehmet Murat ildan
A society which devastates its homelands’ nature no more has the right to live in that territories!
Mehmet Murat ildan
English is so hierarchical. In Cree, we don't have animate-inanimate comparisons between things. Animals have souls that are equal to ours. Rocks have souls, trees have souls. Trees are 'who,' not 'what.
Tomson Highway
Your friends are all the dullest dogs I know. They are not beautiful: they are only decorated. They are not clean: they are only shaved and starched. They are not dignified: they are only fashionably dressed. They are not educated: they are only college passmen. They are not religious: they are only pewrenters. They are not moral: they are only conventional. They are not virtuous: they are only cowardly. They are not even vicious: they are only “frail.” They are not artistic: they are only lascivious. They are not prosperous: they are only rich. They are not loyal, they are only servile; not dutiful, only sheepish; not public spirited, only patriotic; not courageous, only quarrelsome; not determined, only obstinate; not masterful, only domineering; not self-controlled, only obtuse; not self-respecting, only vain; not kind, only sentimental; not social, only gregarious; not considerate, only polite; not intelligent, only opinionated; not progressive, only factious; not imaginative, only superstitious; not just, only vindictive; not generous, only propitiatory; not disciplined, only cowed; and not truthful at all: liars every one of them, to the very backbone of their souls.
George Bernard Shaw
You are an ordinary person till the day you realise that you have the power to change the world!
Mehmet Murat ildan
You’re young, and like anything new. It’s change you want. I’m middle-aged, and there’s nothing staler to me than change. Constant comfort and little luxuries as regular as the clock are fresher than change.
John Davidson
Marriage is a fine institution, but I'm not ready for an institution.
Mae West
Some looks are heavier than the thickest books because they carry the saddest stories of life!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Afore me! It is so very late,That we may call it early by and by.
William Shakespeare
This whole life is an art of knowing when to sit and when to stand up!
Mehmet Murat ildan
There was a tacit understanding between them that 'liquor helped' growing more miserable with every glass one hoped for the moment of relief.
Graham Greene
Que les poètes morts laissent la place aux autres. Et nous pourrions tout de même voir que c'est notre vénération devant ce qui a été déjà fait, si beau et si valable que ce soit, qui nous pétrifie, qui nous stabilise et nous empêche de prendre contact avec la force qui est dessous, que l'on appelle l'énergie pensante, la force vitale, le déterminisme des échanges, les menstrues de la lune ou tout ce qu'on voudra.
Antonin Artaud
Thus weary of the world, away she hies,And yokes her silver doves; by whose swift aidTheir mistress mounted through the empty skiesIn her light chariot quickly is convey'd;Holding their course to Paphos, where their queenMeans to immure herself and not be seen.
William Shakespeare
To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.
W Somerset Maugham
You can’t, if you can’t feel it, if it neverRises from the soul, and swaysThe heart of every single hearer,With deepest power, in simple ways.You’ll sit forever, gluing things together,Cooking up a stew from other’s scraps,Blowing on a miserable fire,Made from your heap of dying ash.Let apes and children praise your art,If their admiration’s to your taste,But you’ll never speak from heart to heart,Unless it rises up from your heart’s space.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe