Quotes by Playwrights - Page 187

And he, like many jaded people, had few pleasures left in life save good food and drink.
Honoré de Balzac
LEONATOWell, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband.BEATRICENot till God make men of some other metal than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered with a pierce of valiant dust? to make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl? No, uncle, I'll none: Adam's sons are my brethren; and, truly, I hold it a sin to match in my kindred.
William Shakespeare
One recipe for happiness is to have to sense of entitlement.' To this she added a star and noted at the bottom of the page: 'This is not a lesson I have ever been in a position to learn.
Alan Bennett
Three o'clock in the morning. The soft April night is looking at my windows and caressingly winking at me with its stars. I can't sleep, I am so happy.
Anton Chekhov
LEONATOWell, then, go you into hell?BEATRICENo, but to the gate; and there will the devil meet me, like an old cuckold, with horns on his head, and say 'Get you to heaven, Beatrice, get you to heaven; here's no place for you maids:' so deliver I up my apes, and away to Saint Peter for the heavens; he shows me where the bachelors sit, and there live we as merry as the day is long.
William Shakespeare
Why did you look at the sunset?'Philip answered with his mouth full:Because I was happy.
W Somerset Maugham
Everyone chases after happiness, not noticing that happiness is at their heels.
Bertolt Brecht
The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.
George Bernard Shaw
... too much brooding, not enough doing.
Timothy Findley
When I saw you, I fell in love, and you smiled because you knew
William Shakespeare
Yes, faith; it is my cousin's duty to make curtsy and say 'Father, as it please you.' But yet for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another curtsy and say 'Father, as it please me.
William Shakespeare
A dim vastness is spread before our souls; the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our vision... But alas! when we have attained our object, when the distant 'there' becomes the present 'here,' all is changed; we are as poor and circumscribed as ever, and our souls still languish for unattainable happiness.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.
William Saroyan
I think by the time you're grown you're as happy as you're goin to be. You'll have good times and bad times, but in the end you'll be about as happy as you was before. Or as unhappy. I've knowed people that just never did get the hang of it.
Cormac McCarthy
The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation, because occupation means pre-occupation; and the pre-occupied person is neither happy nor unhappy, but simply alive and active. That is why it is necessary to happiness that one should be tired.
George Bernard Shaw
Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either extreme egotism, selfishness, evil -- or else an absolute ignorance.
Graham Greene
Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes
Bertolt Brecht
There's little of the melancholy element in her, my lord: she is never sad but when she sleeps; and not ever sad then; for I have heard my daughter say, she hath often dreamt of unhappiness, and waked herself with laughing.
William Shakespeare
There is no greater power than that of a laugh and happiness is a force which can save a person from the horrors of the world.
Hillary DePiano
I spit on your happiness! I spit on your idea of life--that life that must go on, come what may. You are all like dogs that lick everything they smell. You with your promise of a humdrum happiness--provided a person doesn't ask much of life. I want everything of life, I do; and I want it now! I want it total, complete: otherwise I reject it! I will not be moderate. I will not be satisfied with the bit of cake you offer me if I promise to be a good little girl. I want to be sure of everything this very day; sure that everything will be as beautiful as when I was a little girl. If not, I want to die!
Jean Anouilh
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
George Bernard Shaw
Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.
Robertson Davies
Even in Siberia there is happiness.
Anton Chekhov
Some day you will find out that there is far more happiness in another's happiness than in your own.
Honoré de Balzac
Age does not make us childish, as some say; it finds us true children.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be.
Marcel Pagnol
The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes, but in liking what one does.
J.M. Barrie
What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but scattered along life's pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.
Joseph Addison
Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn't disdain what lives only for a day. It pours the whole of itself into the each moment. We don't value the lily less for not being made of flint and built to last. Life's bounty is in its flow, later is too late. Where is the song when it's been sung? The dance when it's been danced? It's only we humans who want to own the future, too. We persuade ourselves that the universe is modestly employed in unfolding our destination. We note the haphazard chaos of history by the day, by the hour, but there is something wrong with the picture. Where is the unity, the meaning, of nature's highest creation? Surely those millions of little streams of accident and wilfulness have their correction in the vast underground river which, without a doubt, is carrying us to the place where we're expected! But there is no such place, that's why it's called utopia. The death of a child has no more meaning than the death of armies, of nations. Was the child happy while he lived? That is a proper question, the only question. If we can't arrange our own happiness, it's a conceit beyond vulgarity to arrange the happiness of those who come after us.
Tom Stoppard
Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.
Daphne du Maurier
The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belongs to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity.
Graham Greene
With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.
William Shakespeare
It is the very mark of the spirit of rebellion to crave for happiness in this life
Henrik Ibsen
When the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.
J.M. Barrie
I'm happy. Which often looks like crazy.
David Henry Hwang
All happiness depends on courage and work.
Honoré de Balzac
Only something extremely dire and disabling will ever stop a real writer from writing. Retirement is never an option.
Warren Adler
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him; The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft interred with their bones
William Shakespeare
Dreaming is the poetry of Life, and we must be forgiven if we indulge in it a little.
John Galsworthy
Tongues in trees, books in running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.
William Shakespeare
I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this., New York Times, April 19, 1992]
Cormac McCarthy
When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.
Enrique Jardiel Poncela
His life was gentle; and the elementsSo mixed in him, that Nature might stand upAnd say to all the world, THIS WAS A MAN!
William Shakespeare
Open your mind before your mouth
Aristophanes
Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter
Robert Greene
You will never attain wisdom without walking on different streets, without talking to different people, without reading different books, in short, without meeting with the things different in every aspect!
Mehmet Murat ildan
...Vezi câte s-au întâmplat odinioară?... În zilele noastre însă nu mai întâlnești nimic, nici fapte, nici oameni, nici poveşti ca cele din trecut... Oare de ce?... Ia spune-mi! Aşa-i că nu poți să-mi spui?!... Ce știi tu? Ce știți voi tinerii? Ehei! Privește cu luare-aminte în trecut... şi acolo vei găsi răspuns la toate... Da voi nu vreți să vă uitați în urmă, şi, de aceea, nu știți să trăiți...Parcă eu nu văd cum e viața de astăzi? Ah, văd prea bine, cu toate că mi-a slăbit vederea! Văd că oamenii nu mai trăiesc, ci doar încearcă să trăiască, istovindu-şi în zadar toată vlaga din ei... Şi după ce s-au prădat chiar pe ei, pierzându-şi vremea în zadar, încep să se plângă de soartă. Ce amestec are ea în toate acestea? Fiecare își croiește singur soarta lui! În ziua de azi văd tot felul de oameni, dar oameni puternici nu mai văd!
Maxim Gorki
Old people have wisdom but not energy; young people have energy but not wisdom; energy and wisdom must be in the same body to create a much better civilisation! To do this, we will either give energy to the old or we will give wisdom to the young and for now the latter seems a more plausible action!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Let your walk be wisely so that you can inspire others to walk wisely!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Wisdom is not a mysterious universe where your mind enters but it is a mysterious universe which enters your mind!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Truth was something intangible, unseen, which sometimes we stumbled upon and did not recognize, but was found, and held, and understood only by old people near their death, or sometimes by the very pure, the very young.
Daphne du Maurier
Everybody has a right to their own troubles.
Thornton Wilder
Young love is common, but that doesn't mean it's not precious.
Eoin Colfer
Whatever happens when the seed meets the soil, the same thing happens when you meet the wisdom!
Mehmet Murat ildan
You see, wisdom does not come with grey hairs.
Nikolai Gogol
There are paths above the paths, the paths of the birds! There are paths above the paths of the birds, the paths of the clouds! And there are paths above the paths of the clouds, the paths of the planets! When you are travelling on a path, never forget that there are higher paths, there are higher wisdoms over your head!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Se ciascuno pensa solo a se stesso e non si fida che di se stesso, come volete che ci sia coraggio civile, dal momento che questa virtù si basa sulla rinuncia a se stessi? Coraggio civile e coraggio militare nascono dallo stesso principio. Voi siete chiamati a dare la vostra vita in un sol momento, la nostra si consuma a goccia a goccia. Da entrambe le parti è la stessa lotta, sotto forme diverse. Non basta essere onesti per far progredire il più piccolo paese, bisogna anche essere preparati; senza contare che istruzione, onestà, amor di patria non valgono niente se non c'è la ferma volontà di trascurare ogni interesse personale per dedicarsi al pubblico bene
Honoré de Balzac
Even the wisdom of the wisest depends on the accumulated wisdom of the past!
Mehmet Murat ildan
To attain the wisdom of every season, you must live all the seasons!
Mehmet Murat ildan
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