Quotes by Playwrights - Page 129

Mid-Term BreakI sat all morning in the college sick bayCounting bells knelling classes to a close.At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home.In the porch I met my father crying—He had always taken funerals in his stride—And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pramWhen I came in, and I was embarrassedBy old men standing up to shake my handAnd tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble'.Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,Away at school, as my mother held my handIn hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.At ten o'clock the ambulance arrivedWith the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.Next morning I went up into the room. SnowdropsAnd candles soothed the bedside; I saw himFor the first time in six weeks. Paler now,Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot.No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.A four-foot box, a foot for every year.
Seamus Heaney
If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,When other petty griefs have done their spite,But in the onset come: so shall I tasteAt first the very worst of fortune’s might;And other strains of woe, which now seem woe,Compar’d with loss of thee will not seem so.
William Shakespeare
And then he went in the evening up to the nursery and told the boy how his mother was gone for a while to Elfland, to her father's palace (which may only be told of in song). And, unheeding any words of Orion then, he held on with the brief tale that he had come to tell, and told how Elfland was gone."But that cannot be," said Orion, "for I hear the horns of Elfland every day.""You can hear them?" Alveric said.And the boy replied, "I hear them blowing at evening.
Lord Dunsany
When I go out by the gateway, taking the road I drove along that first time I picked up Lotte for the ball, how very different it all is! It is all over, all of it! There is not a hint of the world that once was, not one bulse-beat of those past emotions. I feel like a ghost returning to the burnt-out ruins of the castle he built in his prime as a prince, which he adorned with magnificent splendours and then, on his deathbed, but full of hope, left to his beloved son
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I am sad when I think that the years go by like sacks that we mark "Returned Empty," sad when I think that we shall be separated from one another and from ourselves.
Eugène Ionesco
Learning kindness late in life was a kind of torture. The pain often came from the past, form kindnesses withheld. The knife was particularly sharp when those who most deserved your kindness were long gone. And unless you wanted to die of sorrow, you had to give this unspent kindness to those you loved less.
Victor Lodato
When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough. If we always had smiled on the one who is gone, there would be no despair in our grief; and some sweetness would cling to our tears, reminiscent of virtues and happiness. For our recollections of veritable love—which indeed is the act of virtue containing all others—call from our eyes the same sweet, tender tears as those most beautiful hours wherein memory was born.
Maurice Maeterlinck
I dont know what happens to country.
Cormac McCarthy
I didn't mean I'd seen everything, John Grady said.I know you didn't.I just meant I'd seen some things I'd as soon not of.I know it. There's hard lessons in this world. What's the hardest? I dont know. Maybe it's just that when things are gone they're gone. They aint comin back. Yessir.
Cormac McCarthy
I prithee send me back my heart,Since I cannot have thine;For if from yours you will not part,Why, then, shouldst thou have mine?Yet now I think on't, let it lie,To find it were in vain;For thou hast a thief in either eyeWould steal it back again.Why should two hearts in one breast lie,And yet not lodge together?O Love! where is thy sympathy,If thus our breasts thou sever?But love is such a mystery,I cannot find it out;For when I think I'm best resolved,I then am in most doubt.Then farewell care, and farewell woe;I will no longer pine;For I'll believe I have her heart,As much as she hath mine.
John Suckling
Sweet for a little even to fear, and sweet,tO love, to lay down fear at love’s fair feet;tShall not some fiery memory of his breathtLie sweet on lips that touch the lips of death?tYet leave me not; yet, if thou wilt, be free;Love me no more, but love my love of thee.tLove where thou wilt, and live thy life; and I,tOne thing I can, and one love cannot—die.tPass from me; yet thine arms, thine eyes, thine hair,tFeed my desire and deaden my despair.Yet once more ere time change us, ere my cheektWhiten, ere hope be dumb or sorrow speak,tYet once more ere thou hate me, one full kiss;tKeep other hours for others, save me this.tYea, and I will not (if it please thee) weep,Lest thou be sad; I will but sigh, and sleep.tSweet, does death hurt? thou canst not do me wrong:tI shall not lack thee, as I loved thee, long.tHast thou not given me above all that livetJoy, and a little sorrow shalt not give?What even though fairer fingers of strange girlstPass nestling through thy beautiful boy’s curlstAs mine did, or those curled lithe lips of thinetMeet theirs as these, all theirs come after mine;tAnd though I were not, though I be not, best,I have loved and love thee more than all the rest.tO love, O lover, loose or hold me fast,tI had thee first, whoever have thee last;tFairer or not, what need I know, what care?tTo thy fair bud my blossom once seemed fair.Why am I fair at all before thee, whytAt all desired? seeing thou art fair, not I.tI shall be glad of thee, O fairest head,tAlive, alone, without thee, with thee, dead;tI shall remember while the light lives yet,And in the night-time I shall not forget.tThough (as thou wilt) thou leave me ere life leave,tI will not, for thy love I will not, grieve;tNot as they use who love not more than I,tWho love not as I love thee though I die;And though thy lips, once mine, be oftener presttTo many another brow and balmier breast,tAnd sweeter arms, or sweeter to thy mind,tLull thee or lure, more fond thou wilt not find.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Well, heaven forgive him! and forgive us all! Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall: Some run from brakes of ice, and answer none: And some condemned for a fault alone.
William Shakespeare
Sometimes lost treasures can be reclaimed.
Rebecca Wells
In one of their quarrels, they had begun calling each other Mister. and Misses., and since then they had never made it up enough to change it.
Carson McCullers
Though with their high wrongs I am struck to th' quick,Yet with my nobler reason 'gainst my furyDo I take part.
William Shakespeare
Don’t lose that anger. Just have a little more patience and forgiveness. For yourself as well.
Larry Kramer
Let us not despise the woman who is neither mother nor daughter nor wife. Let us not limit our esteem to family life, narrow our tolerance to simple egotism. Given that heaven rejoices more at the repentance of one sinner than over a hundred good men who have never sinned, let us endeavor to make heaven rejoice. We may be rewarded with interest. Let us leave along the path the alms of our forgiveness for those whose earthly desires have marooned them, so that a divine hope may save them, and, as the wise old women say when they prescribe a remedy of their own invention, if it doesn't help, at least it can't hurt.
Alexandre Dumas fils
Please, Mr. Engineer let a man ride the linePlease, Mr. Engineer let a man ride the lineI ain't got no ticket please let me ride the blinds
August Wilson
You can't visit the sins of the father upon the child.
August Wilson
May the dead forgive me, I can do no otherBut as I am commanded; to do more is madness." - Ismene
Sophocles
May the dead forgive me, I can do no otherBut as I am commanded; to do more is madness." - Ismene, Antigone (The Theban Plays) by Sophocles
Sophocles
I'm too old to recover, too narrow to forgive myself.
Lillian Hellman
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,Men were deceivers ever,-One foot in sea and one on shore,To one thing constant never.
William Shakespeare
One would say You had not left me for a single instant. "Did you doubt it?
Gabrielle Bossis
the mother again remarked the simplicity and calmness of their relation to each other. it was hard for her to get used to it. no kissing, no affictionate words passed between them but they behaved so sincerely, so amicably and so solicitously toward each other. in the life she had been accustomed to, people kissed a great deal and uttered many sentimental words, but always bit at one another like hungry dogs.
Maxim Gorky
But life, they said, means life. Dying inside.The Devil was evil, mad, but I was the Devil's wifewhich made me worse. I howled in my cell.If the Devil is gone then how could this be hell?
Carol Ann Duffy
Yvan's a very tolerant bloke, which of course, when it comes to relationships, is the worst thing you can be. Yvan's very tolerant because he couldn't care less.
Yasmina Reza
JACKIE. I swear to God: Being in love with Veronica - it's like feeding your love to Godzilla every morning, and every morning you go "Yo, 'Zilla, these shits are very delicate so please chew softly", - and every morning - the motherfucker just goes crunch!
Stephen Adly Guirgis
I happened to look up and there it was. All over and done with, at last. I sat on for a few moments with the ball in my hand and the dog yelping and pawing at me. (Pause.) Moments. Her moments, my moments (Pause.) The dog's moments.
Samuel Beckett
I asked her to look at me and after a few moments - (pause) - after a few moments she did, but the eyes just slits, because of the glare I bent over her to get them in the shadow and they opened. (Pause. Low) Let me in.
Samuel Beckett
How do you manage it, she said, at your age? I told her I'd been saving up for her all my life.
Samuel Beckett
I see it on his face. I hear it when he talks. We look out at the world and we see the same thing: Not Fair. And the only difference between us is Ricky's out there trying to get even. And he knows not trust anybody and he got it straight from me. And he knows not to try and get work, and guess where he got that. He walks around like there's loose boards in the floor, and you know who laid that floor, I did.
Marsha Norman
Proctor: I am only wondering how I may prove what she told me, Elizabeth. If the girl's a saint now, I think it is not easy to prove she's fraud, and the town gone so silly. She told it to me in a room alone- I have no proof for it.Elizabeth: You were alone wit
Arthur Miller
You can have your secret as long as I have your heart[.]
Oscar Wilde
The only people in this world I really trust are my fans - even if they do forget you so fast.
Yukio Mishima
Presidents don't make new friends. That's why they've got to keep their old ones." Adm. Fitzwallace
Aaron Sorkin
When you trust yourself, you will come out like a beautiful sunbeam through the dark clouds!
Mehmet Murat ildan
We were perfectly decorous together. It took the will of both of us. I trusted him with me, and myself with him.
Ronald Frame
But what I knew then was that nobody-- not even my mother-- was to be trusted in a strange world that showed very little of itself on the surface.
Robertson Davies
Most of life’s big steps require a certain muddling through, a trusting that no one really knows the magical formula for the big firsts in life [Cram, Cusi, "‘One Life to Live’ and 14 Beautiful Boys to Kiss," Cafe, January 14, 2015].
Cusi Cram
Don’t you trust me! What good is it if you don’t bloody trust me!
Diane Samuels
When you trust yourself, you sow the seeds of fear into the hearts of your enemies!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Trust yourself, trust the road, trust the weather and trust your destination! This quarto-trust can create a miraculously successful journey!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Whom, then, to love? Whom to believe?Who is the only one that won't betray us?Who measures all deeds, all speechesobligingly by our own foot rule?Who does not sow slander about us?Who coddles us with care?To whom our vice is not so bad?Who never bores us?Unlike a futile phantom-seekerwho wastes effort in vain-love your own self,my honorworthy reader.A worthy object! Nothingmore amiable surely exists.
Alexander Pushkin
A man becomes trustworthy when you trust him.
Graham Greene
For trust not him that hath once broken faith
William Shakespeare
For somehow this is tyranny's disease, to trust no friends.
Aeschylus
I trust everyone. I just don’t trust the devil inside them.
Troy Kennedy Martin
...And we left the lightfor the night of the street
Pierre Albert-Birot
From whichever direction or from whoever the light comes to you, always welcome it!
Mehmet Murat ildan
If you have a light, meet the world or let the world meets you!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Earthworms cannot be painters. Those who live in the darkness can never perceive and appreciate the beauties of the light!
Mehmet Murat ildan
If there is a powerful light within you, it will be clearly visible to others!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Reduce the light, increase the concentration!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Hope, like the gleaming taper’s light, adorns and cheers our way; and still, as darker grows the night, emits a brighter ray.
Oliver Goldsmith
There are beautiful things in the world and there are sad things and when they come together they make a star. The light is far away and the strangest part is that the light is inside you.
Victor Lodato
O Light Invisible, we praise Thee! Too bright for mortal vision. O Greater Light, we praise Thee for the less; The eastern light our spires touch at morning, The light that slants upon our western doors at evening, The twilight over stagnant pools at batflight, Moon light and star light, owl and moth light, Glow-worm glowlight on a grassblade. O Light Invisible, we worship Thee! We thank Thee for the light that we have kindled, The light of altar and of sanctuary; Small lights of those who meditate at midnight And lights directed through the coloured panes of windows And light reflected from the polished stone, The gilded carven wood, the coloured fresco. Our gaze is submarine, our eyes look upward And see the light that fractures through unquiet water. We see the light but see not whence it comes. O Light Invisible, we glorify Thee!
T.S Eliot
I'll tell you what I want. Magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misinterpret things to them. I don't tell the truth. I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it! - Don't turn the light on!
Tennessee Williams
Through darkness diamonds spread their richest light.
John Webster