Quotes by Playwrights - Page 184

We are all resigned to death: it's life we aren't resigned to.
Graham Greene
When she expressed a doubtful hope that Tinker Bell would be glad to see her, he said, ‘Who is Tinker Bell?’t‘O Peter,’ she said, shocked; but even when she explained he could not remember.t‘There are such a lot of them,’ he said. ‘I expect she is no more.’tI expect he was right, for fairies don’t live long, but they are so little that a short time seems a good while to them.
J.M. Barrie
The rest, is silence.
William Shakespeare
My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.
Oscar Wilde
Clown: Good Madonna, why mournest thou?Olivia: Good Fool, for my brother's death.Clown:I think his soul is in hell, Madonna.Olivia:I know his soul is in heaven, Fool.Clown: The more fool, Madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul being in heaven.
William Shakespeare
I know that I shall die struggling for breath, and I know that I shall be horribly afraid. I know that I shall not be able to keep myself from regretting bitterly the life that has brought me to such a pass; but I disown that regret. I now, weak, old, diseased, poor, dying, hold still my soul in my hands, and I regret nothing.
W Somerset Maugham
For he who lives more lives than one more deaths than one must die.
Oscar Wilde
In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments. Those whom life does not cure death will. The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and reality, even where we will not. Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting. I've thought a great deal about my life and my country. I think there is little that can be truly known. My family has been fortunate. Others were less so. As they are often quick to point out.
Cormac McCarthy
After us they'll fly in hot air balloons, coat styles will change, perhaps they'll discover a sixth sense and cultivate it, but life will remain the same, a hard life full of secrets, but happy. And a thousand years from now man will still be sighing, "Oh! Life is so hard!" and will still, like now, be afraid of death and not want to die.
Anton Chekhov
Here lies a gentleman boldWho was so very braveHe went to lengths untold,And on the brink of the graveDeath had on him no hold.By the world he set small store--He frightened it to the core--Yet somehow, by Fate's plan,Though he'd lived a crazy man,When he died he was sane once more.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
It was not my intention to collapse; no, I would die standing.
Knut Hamsun
Listen, children:Your father is dead.From his old coatsI'll make you little jackets;I'll make you little trousersFrom his old pants.There'll be in his pocketsThings he used to put there,Keys and penniesCovered with tobacco;Dan shall have the penniesTo save in his bank;Anne shall have the keysTo make a pretty noise with.Life must go on,Though good men die;Anne, eat your breakfast;Dan, take your medicine;Life must go on;I forget just why.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
From too much love of livingFrom hope and fear set free,We thank with brief thanksgivingWhatever gods may beThat no life lives for ever;That dead men rise up never;That even the weariest riverWinds somewhere safe to sea.Then star nor sun shall waken,Nor any change of light:Nor sound of waters shaken,Nor any sound or sight:Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,Nor days nor things diurnal;Only the sleep eternalIn an eternal night.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Oh, the torment bred in the race, the grinding scream of deathand the stroke that hits the vein,the hemorrhage none can staunch, the grief,the curse no man can bear.But there is a cure in the house, and not outside it, no,not from others but from them,their bloody strife. We sing to you,dark gods beneath the earth.Now hear, you blissful powers underground --answer the call, send help.Bless the children, give them triumph now.
Aeschylus
Death is not the worst thing; rather, when one who craves death cannot attain even that wish.
Sophocles
Where is Polonius? HAMLET t In heaven. Send hither to see. If your messenger find him not there, seek him i' th' other place yourself. But if indeed you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.
William Shakespeare
How does one become butterfly?' Pooh asked pensively.'You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar,' Piglet replied.'You mean to die?' asked Pooh.'Yes and no,' he answered. 'What looks like you will die, but what's really you will live on.
A.A. Milne
Her blood is settled, and her joints are stiff;Life and these lips have long been separated:Death lies on her like an untimely frostUpon the sweetest flower of all the field.
William Shakespeare
O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, / That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
William Shakespeare
Mendacity is a system that we live in," declares Brick. "Liquor is one way out an'death's the other.
Tennessee Williams
Death is another bar which lies several steps below the normal world. I'm at its threshold, but not yet in it. Its doorway is doorless.
Kathy Acker
It was the nature of his profession that his experience with death should be greater than for most and he said that while it was true that time heals bereavement it does so only at the cost of the slow extinction of those loved ones from the heart's memory which is the sole place of their abode then or now. Faces fade, voices dim. Seize them back, whispered the sepulturero. Speak with them. Call their names. Do this and do not let sorrow die for it is the sweetening of every gift.
Cormac McCarthy
[HAMILTON]I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory
Lin-Manuel Miranda
And what does it mean -- dying? Perhaps man has a hundred senses, and only the five we know are lost at death, while the other ninety-five remain alive.
Anton Chekhov
Wait," said Butler. "Just wait, Holly. Artemis has a plan." He squinted through the green dome. "What is your plan, Artemis?"All Artemis could do was smile and shrug.
Eoin Colfer
Woe, destruction, ruin, and decay; the worst is death and death will have his day.
William Shakespeare
Everybody has got to die, but I have always believed an exception would be made in my case.
William Saroyan
Either this wallpaper goes, or I do.
Oscar Wilde
Don't look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you'll know you're dead.
Tennessee Williams
Today will die tomorrow.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
The rest of my days I'm going to spend on the sea. And when I die, I'm going to die on the sea. You know what I shall die of? I shall die of eating an unwashed grape. One day out on the ocean I will die--with my hand in the hand of some nice looking ship's doctor, a very young one with a small blond moustache and a big silver watch. "Poor lady," they'll say, "The quinine did her no good. That unwashed grape has transported her soul to heaven.
Tennessee Williams
We have only a little time to please the living. But all eternity to love the dead.
Sophocles
Death, a necessary end, will come when it will come
William Shakespeare
One pain is lessened by another’s anguish. ... Take thou some new infection to thy eye, And the rank poison of the old will die.
William Shakespeare
She had lost all our memories for ever, and it was as though by dying she had robbed me of part of myself. I was losing my individuality. It was the first stage of my own death, the memories dropping off like gangrened limbs.
Graham Greene
I said to myself, 'I want to die decently'.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Though you may hear me holler,And you may see me cry--I'll be dogged, sweet baby,If you gonna see me die.
Langston Hughes
It would be wrong to refuse to face the fact that everything is fundamentally sick and sad.
Thomas Bernhard
They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more.
Samuel Beckett
Full fathom five thy father lies;Of his bones are coral made;Those are pearls that were his eyes:Nothing of him that doth fade,But doth suffer a sea-changeInto something rich and strange.Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Ding-dong Hark! now I hear them,—Ding-dong, bell.
William Shakespeare
No drowning man can know which dropOf water his last breath did stop
Charles Sedley
Rosencrantz: We might as well be dead. Do you think death could possibly be a boat?Guildenstern: No, no, no... Death is...not. Death isn't. You take my meaning. Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can't not-be on a boat.Rosencrantz: I've frequently not been on boats.Guildenstern: No, no, no--what you've been is not on boats.
Tom Stoppard
It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a seagull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must be a little in love with death!
Eugene O'Neill
That time of year thou mayst in me beholdWhen yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hangUpon those boughs which shake against the cold,Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.In me thou seest the twilight of such dayAs after sunset fadeth in the west,Which by and by black night doth take away,Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.In me thou see'st the glowing of such fireThat on the ashes of his youth doth lie,As the death-bed whereon it must expireConsumed with that which it was nourish'd by.This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
William Shakespeare
Can you do it? When the time comes? When the time comes there will be no time. Now is the time. Curse God and die.
Cormac McCarthy
The only sin is the sin of being born
Samuel Beckett
Peter was not quite like other boys; but he was afraid at last. A tremour ran through him, like a shudder passing over the sea; but on the sea one shudder follows another till there are hundreds of them, and Peter felt just the one. Next moment he was standing erect on the rock again, with that smile on his face and a drum beating within him. It was saying, "To die will be an awfully big adventure.
J.M. Barrie
Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else.
Oscar Wilde
Two turtle doves will show theeWhere my cold ashes lieAnd sadly murmuring tell theeHow in tears I did die
Nikolai Gogol
Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men.
George Bernard Shaw
If they tell you that she died of sleeping pills you must know that she died of a wasting grief, of a slow bleeding at the soul.
Clifford Odets
I have outlasted all desire,My dreams and I have grown apart;My grief alone is left entire,The gleamings of an empty heart.The storms of ruthless dispensationHave struck my flowery garland numb,I live in lonely desolationAnd wonder when my end will come.Thus on a naked tree-limb, blastedBy tardy winter's whistling chill,A single leaf which has outlastedIts season will be trembling still.
Alexander Pushkin
To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and, by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub.
William Shakespeare
I went down to the river,I set down on the bank.I tried to think but couldn't,So I jumped in and sank.
Langston Hughes
When he shall die,Take him and cut him out in little stars,And he will make the face of heaven so fineThat all the world will be in love with nightAnd pay no worship to the garish sun.
William Shakespeare
If you can defeat your own calamity, you will be a hope for others and thus you can defeat the calamity of others too!
Mehmet Murat ildan
A homeless with hope is in a better situation than a hopeless with home!
Mehmet Murat ildan
There was not even any hope for Miss Roach that Mr. Thwaites would ever die.
Patrick Hamilton
This is what the good guys do. They keep trying. They don't give up.
Cormac McCarthy
While there is life, there is hope.
Jules Verne