Quotes by Playwrights - Page 154

But if I am young, thou shouldest look to my merits, not to my years.
Sophocles
Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius.
George Bernard Shaw
HALE, with a tasty love of intellectual pursuit
Arthur Miller
The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence.
Oscar Wilde
One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.
George Bernard Shaw
The ugly and stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live-- undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They never bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Henry; my brains, such as they are-- my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks-- we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.
Oscar Wilde
Every true genius is bound to be naive.
Friedrich Schiller
Pooh hasn't much Brain, but he never comes to any harm. He does silly things and they turn out right. There's Owl. Owl hasn't exactly got Brain, but he Knows Things. He would know the Right Thing to Do when Surrounded by Water. There's Rabbit. He hasn't Learnt in Books, but he can always Think of a Clever Plan. There's Kanga. She isn't Clever, Kanga isn't, but she would be so anxious about Roo that she would do a Good Thing to Do without thinking about it. And then there's Eeyore. And Eeyore is so miserable anyhow that he wouldn't mind about this.
A.A. Milne
The key then to attaining this higher level of intelligence is to make our years of study qualitatively rich. We don't simply absorb information - we internalize it and make it our own by finding some way to put this knowledge to practical use.
Robert Greene
[Chess] is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever, when they are only wasting their time.
George Bernard Shaw
Nothing whets the intelligence more than a passionate suspicion, nothing develops all the faculties of an immature mind more than a trail running away into the dark.
Stefan Zweig
I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am.
Cormac McCarthy
I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.
Oscar Wilde
Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.
Oscar Wilde
At the end of all spiritual paths, there lies only a cold graveyard; the path of science is the only path that may give you something better than this!
Mehmet Murat ildan
A journey deep into the Kingdom of Nature is always a mysterious journey, a Sufistic voyage, a spiritual trip!
Mehmet Murat ildan
I can't talk, or I will throw up!
William Shakespeare
Explore many facets of the written word.
Kamla K Kapur
Perhaps her faults and follies, the unhappiness she had suffered, were not entirely vain if she could follow the path that now she dimly discerned before her, not the path that kind funny old Waddington had spoken of that led nowhither, but the path those dear nuns at the convent followed so humbly, the path that led to peace.
W Somerset Maugham
whoever approaches his goal dances
Cormac McCarthy
The sea is everything. It covers seven-tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and life-giving. It is an immense desert place where man is never lonely, for he senses the weaving of Creation on every hand. It is the physical embodiment of a supernatural existence... For the sea is itself nothing but love and emotion. It is the Living Infinite, as one of your poets has said. Nature manifests herself in it, with her three kingdoms: mineral, vegetable, and animal. The ocean is the vast reservoir of Nature.
Jules Verne
The greatest evil that can befall man is that he should come to think ill of himself.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
As for being poisoned by a book, there is no such thing as that. Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
Oscar Wilde
Without reading many different books, you can never leave the port of ignorance and can never obtain the peaceful mind of knowing the truth!
Mehmet Murat ildan
His habit of reading isolated him: it became such a need that after being in company for some time he grew tired and restless ...
W Somerset Maugham
It was like that kid had been born knowing how to read. He was only in the second grade but he loved to read stories by himself - and he never asked anybody else to read to him.
Carson McCullers
Books should be cherished, like children, books are for the next generation, like children, like history.
Edna Ferber
By reading books, you lose your old self and you find your new self! To read is to travel from self to another self!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Books need to have their spines cracked, their covers opened, and their pages ruffled for them to come alive.
Chris Grabenstein
Sitting in the brightly lit library, surrounded by books, in total silence, that was ma personal zenith.
Irvine Welsh
So you’re a reader,” My mom sighs, as if somehow this elevates Isabel to yet another realm of perfection.
Denis Markell
When an ignorant reads ignorant things or when he comes together with other ignorant, his ignorance will deepen and his fate will worsen!
Mehmet Murat ildan
...the space which [books] occupied was itself an expectation.
Cormac McCarthy
You talk books away," he said; "why don't you write one?" "I am too fond of reading books to care to write them, Mr. Erskine. I should like to write a novel certainly, a novel that would be as lovely as a Persian carpet and as unreal.
Oscar Wilde
There's a side to all writers that loves nothing better than a book, a big chair, a window.
Gillian Clarke
When I want somebody to read to, To match a dream with tuneful phrase,It is my nurse that I pay heed to,Companion of my youthful days,Or, following a boring dinner,A neihbour comes in, who I corner,Catch at his coat tails suddenlyAnd choke him with a tragedy,Or, (here I am no longer jesting),Haunted by rhymes and yearning's ache,I roam beside my country lakeAnd scare a flock of wild ducks resting:Hearing my strophes' sweet-toned chants,They fly off from the banks at once.
Alexander Pushkin
It seems that one ought to read in two ways: 1) because of a particular and personal interest, which makes the thing one's own, regardless of what other people think of the book 2) to a certain extent, because it is something one 'ought to have read' but one must be quite clear this why one is reading.
T.S Eliot
Keep reading! Keep travelling! Keep thinking! And finally you will be there, in the Land of Wisdom where the mind has the power of an eagle’s eye!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Welcome young poet, in here you are free to follow your star to where you should be.That door of the library was the door into meAnd Lorca and Shelley said “Come to the feast.”Whitechapel Library, Aldgate East.
Bernard Kops
To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less...selfish.
Alan Bennett
There must be a secret hidden in this book or else you wouldn't bother to read it
Kathy Acker
Oh, magic hour when a child first knows it can read printed words! For quite a while, Francie had been spelling out letters, sounding them and then putting the sounds together to mean a word. But, one day, she looked at a page and the word "mouse" had instantaneous meaning. She looked at the word, and a picture of a gray mouse scampered through her mind. She looked further and when she saw "horse," she heard him pawing the ground and saw the sun glint on his glossy coat. The word "running" hit her suddenly and she breathed hard as though running herself. The barrier between he individual sound of each letter and the whole meaning of the word was removed and the printed word meant a thing at one quick glance. She read a few pages rapidly and almost became ill with excitement. She wanted to shout it out. She could read! She could read!From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came to adolescence and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography. On that day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived.
Betty Smith
Reading isn't an occupation we encourage among police officers. We try to keep the paperwork down to a minimum.
Joe Orton
A blessed companion is a book--a book that, fitly chosen, is a lifelong friend...a book that, at a touch, pours its heart into your own.
Douglas William Jerrold
I'm no longer a child and I still want to be, to live with the pirates. Because I want to live forever in wonder. The difference between me as a child and me as an adult is this and only this: when I was a child, I longed to travel into, to live in wonder. Now, I know, as much as I can know anything, that to travel into wonder is to be wonder. So it matters little whether I travel by plane, by rowboat, or by book. Or, by dream. I do not see, for there is no I to see. That is what the pirates know. There is only seeing and, in order to go to see, one must be a pirate.
Kathy Acker
I don't see the use of reading the same thing over and over again,' said Phillip. 'That's only a laborious form of idleness.'But are you under the impression that you have so great a mind that you can understand the most profound writer at a first reading?'I don't want to understand him, I'm not a critic. I'm not interested in him for his sake but for mine.'Why do you read then?'Partly for pleasure, because it's a habit and I'm just as uncomfortable if I don't read as if I don't smoke, and partly to know myself. 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; I've got out of the book all that's any use to me and I can't get anythning more if I read it a dozen times. ...
W Somerset Maugham
The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature. Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic.
Alan Bennett
See, she goes places when she reads. I know all about that. When I'm reading, wherever I am, I'm always somewhere else.
Rebecca Wells
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
T.S Eliot
Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words.
Betty Smith
When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it - or rather, it is like living it. It makes reading so much more exciting, but I don't suppose many people try to do it.
Dodie Smith
Reading brings us unknown friends
Honoré de Balzac
I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.
Oscar Wilde
Take a good book to bed with you—books do not snore.
Thea Dorn
That perfect tranquility of life, which is nowhere to be found but in retreat, a faithful friend and a good library.
Aphra Behn
We read to know we're not alone.
William Nicholson
That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul. It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. It is more delightful than philosophy, as its subject is concrete and not abstract, real and not vague. It is the only civilized form of autobiography, as it deals not with events, but with the thoughts of one's life; not with life's physical accidents of deed or circumstance, but with the spiritual moods and imaginative passions of the mind...The best that one can say of most modern creative art is that it is just a little less vulgar than reality, and so the critic, with his fine sense of distinction and sure instinct of delicate refinement, will prefer to look into the silver mirror or through the woven veil, and will turn his eyes away from the chaos and clamor of actual existence, though the mirror be tarnished and the veil be torn. His sole aim is to chronicle his own impressions. It is for him that pictures are painted, books written, and marble hewn into form.
Oscar Wilde
Of course a miracle may happen, and you may be a great painter, but you must confess the chances are a million to one against it. It'll be an awful sell if at the end you have to acknowledge you've made a hash of it.""I've got to paint," he repeated."Supposing you're never anything more than third-rate, do you think it will have been worth while to give up everything? After all, in any other walk in life it doesn't matter if you're not very good; you can get along quite comfortably if you're just adequate; but it's different with an artist.""You blasted fool," he said."I don't see why, unless it's folly to say the obvious.""I tell you I've got to paint. I can't help myself. When a man falls into the water it doesn't matter how he swims, well or badly: he's got to get out or else he'll drown.
W Somerset Maugham
A painting walks into the room supported by the collector. It is the painting of a nude by a contemporary artist. She is scarred by shadows from venetian blinds. “The ritual scarification of light and shadow,” I say. But am thinking, silently, the female nude is the self-ironization of the male. She, in his shadow, by design.
Carla Harryman
How do I define art? A work of art is not an object of monetary value; it is a timid attempt by man to recreate the miracle of which every young woman is capable: to produce life from nothing. Hence, only women and artists have respect for life, and the segment of the so-called "society" that denies women the right to vote and therefore to participate, and denies artists the right to exist, does not really care for life. It oppresses humanity,and it has, directly or indirectly, a vested interest in wars.
Oskar Kokoschka