Quotes by Playwrights - Page 52

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious
Oscar Wilde
Every man is born to the world of chaos and all his life passes with struggle to create an order!
Mehmet Murat ildan
design is so important because chaos is so hard
Jules Feiffer
He woke up blinking with a slight pain in his head and opened his eyes upon a world boiling in chaos in which everything was in proper order.
Joseph Heller
Now and then, however, he is horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight in giving me pain. Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to some one who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer’s day.
Oscar Wilde
A man has only one escape from his old self — to see a different self in the mirror of some woman's eyes.
Clare Boothe Luce
Up to the present man has hardly cultivated sympathy at all. He has merely sympathy with pain, and sympathy with pain is not the highest form of sympathy. All sympathy is fine, but sympathy with suffering is the least fine mode. It is tainted with egotism. It is apt to become morbid. There is in it a certain element of terror for our own safety. We become afraid that we ourselves might be as the leper or as the blind, and that no man would have care of us. It is curiously limiting, too. One should sympathise with the entirety of life, not with life's sores and maladies merely, but with life's joy and beauty and energy and health and freedom.
Oscar Wilde
Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.
Oscar Wilde
Too much of a good thing can be wonderful!
Mae West
...the human animal is a selfish beast...
Tennessee Williams
The word 'love,' used in connection with the reproduction of our species, is the most odious blasphemy taught in our times.
Honoré de Balzac
A man's interest in the world is only the overflow from his interest in himself.
George Bernard Shaw
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
Oscar Wilde
... desperate times required judicious risk-taking.
Eoin Colfer
To win without risk is to triumph without glory.
Pierre Corneille
If you want to live above the clouds, you will miss the rain! When you want something beautiful, you must also know that you may lose some other beautiful and even more valuable things!
Mehmet Murat ildan
The want of a thing is perplexing enough, but the possession of it is intolerable.
John Vanbrugh
Everyone wants to look for something of their own, a house of their own, a child of their own, a partner of their own, entirely for themselves alone. No one is satisfied with a room of their own any more.
Elfriede Jelinek
I can understand, he said, that many people, many perfectly ordinary people, have an interesting story to tell. No one's experience of life is valueless.
Michael Frayn
A lot of the world seems to repeat itself
Emma Donoghue
Almost always, things are exactly as they appear. People are continually looking at the painful or boring parts of life with the half-hidden expectation that there is more going on beneath the surface, some deeper meaning that will eventually be unveiled; we're waiting for the saving grace, the shocking reveal. But almost always things just are what they are, almost always there's no glittering one hidden under the dirt.
Ben H. Winters
They say the level of civilization is proportionate to the degree of cleanliness of the skin. Assuming that man has a soul, it must, in all likelihood, be housed in the skin.
Kōbō Abe
And he knew something else as a social evolutionist that he might stress someday in his 'Every Change Is for the Worse' should he ever find time to write it: Gold knew that the most advanced and penultimate stage of a civilization was attained when chaos masqueraded as order, and he knew we were already there.
Joseph Heller
Civilized people must, I believe, satisfy the following criteria:1) They respect human beings as individuals and are therefore always tolerant, gentle, courteous and amenable ... They do not create scenes over a hammer or a mislaid eraser; they do not make you feel they are conferring a great benefit on you when they live with you, and they don't make a scandal when they leave. (...)2) They have compassion for other people besides beggars and cats. Their hearts suffer the pain of what is hidden to the naked eye. (...)3) They respect other people's property, and therefore pay their debts.4) They are not devious, and they fear lies as they fear fire. They don't tell lies even in the most trivial matters. To lie to someone is to insult them, and the liar is diminished in the eyes of the person he lies to. Civilized people don't put on airs; they behave in the street as they would at home, they don't show off to impress their juniors. (...)5) They don't run themselves down in order to provoke the sympathy of others. They don't play on other people's heartstrings to be sighed over and cosseted ... that sort of thing is just cheap striving for effects, it's vulgar, old hat and false. (...)6) They are not vain. They don't waste time with the fake jewellery of hobnobbing with celebrities, being permitted to shake the hand of a drunken [judicial orator], the exaggerated bonhomie of the first person they meet at the Salon, being the life and soul of the bar ... They regard prases like 'I am a representative of the Press!!' -- the sort of thing one only hears from [very minor journalists] -- as absurd. If they have done a brass farthing's work they don't pass it off as if it were 100 roubles' by swanking about with their portfolios, and they don't boast of being able to gain admission to places other people aren't allowed in (...) True talent always sits in the shade, mingles with the crowd, avoids the limelight ... As Krylov said, the empty barrel makes more noise than the full one. (...)7) If they do possess talent, they value it ... They take pride in it ... they know they have a responsibility to exert a civilizing influence on [others] rather than aimlessly hanging out with them. And they are fastidious in their habits.
Anton Chekhov
If you are not lucky enough, you can’t reach the future! You might be very intelligent, you might be very talented and a very good planner, but you still need ‘luck’ to reach tomorrow, you still need to be lucky to reach the future!
Mehmet Murat ildan
In our unlucky times, it is a great comfort to think that luck favors only the bad guys or the dull!
Mehmet Murat ildan
It would be one of those evenings when lady luck showed the bitchy streak in her nature
Tennessee Williams
Weeping for the dead's a waste of breath -they're lucky, they can't die again.
Tony Harrison
Sometimes you find bad luck and good luck in the same place.
August Wilson
Some people carry their luck with them and people got to find it.
August Wilson
Some donkeys have amazing luck.
George Bernard Shaw
Luck is believing your lucky.
Tennessee Williams
Indeed there's a woundy luck in names.
Ben Jonson
Sometimes a crumb fallsFrom the tables of joy, Sometimes a boneIs flung.To some peopleLove is given, To othersOnly heaven.
Langston Hughes
Our worst misfortunes never happen, and most miseries lie in anticipation.
Honoré de Balzac
You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.
Cormac McCarthy
That little glow of comfort lasted me right through the evening but was gone when I woke up next morning. Wakings are the worst times--almost before my eyes are open a great weight seems to roll on to my heart.
Dodie Smith
I wanted to get away,' said she; 'everybody wants to plague and worry me about nothing. They'll be all right tomorrow. What's worrying them?''They are sacrificing to our Canadian God,' said Solly. 'We all believe that if we fret and abuse ourselves sufficiently, Providence will take pity and smile upon anything we attempt. A light heart, or a consciousness of desert, attracts ill luck. You have been away from your native land too long. You have forgotten our folkways. Listen to that gang over there; they are scanning the heavens and hoping aloud that it won't rain tomorrow. That is to placate the Mean Old Man in the Sky, and persuade him to be kind to us.
Robertson Davies
Why should he watch the hideous corruption of his soul?
Oscar Wilde
In the corrupted currents of this worldOffence's gilded hand may shove by justice,And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itselfBuys out the law. . . (Claudius, from Hamlet, Act 3, scene 3)
William Shakespeare
This story shall the good man teach his son;And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,From this day to the ending of the world,But we in it shall be remembered-We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;For he to-day that sheds his blood with meShall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,This day shall gentle his condition;And gentlemen in England now-a-bedShall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaksThat fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day
William Shakespeare
More grief to hide than hate to utter love. Polonius, Hamlet.
William Shakespeare
O ill-starred wench! Pale as your smock!
William Shakespeare
We will meet; and there we may rehearse mostobscenely and courageously.Shakespeare, Midsummer Night's Dream. Spoken by Bottom, Act I Sc. 2
William Shakespeare
Ram. My lord constable, the armor that I saw in your tent to-night, are those stars or suns upon it?Con. Stars, my lord.Dau. Some of them will fall to-morrow, I hope.Con. And yet my sky shall not want.Dau. That may be, for you bear a many superfluously, and ’twere more honor some were away.Con. Even as your horse bears your praises; who would trot as well, were some of your brags dismounted.Henry V, 3.7.69-78
William Shakespeare
Lucentio: I read that I profess, the Art of Love.Bianca: And may you prove, sir, master of your art!Lucentio: While you, sweet dear, prove mistress of my heart!
William Shakespeare
I think he'll be to Rome as is the osprey to the fish, who takes it by sovereignty of nature.
William Shakespeare
Strike as thou didst at Caesar; for I know / When though didst hate him worst, thou loved’st him better / Than ever thou loved’st Cassius.
William Shakespeare
Friar Laurence:O, mickle is the powerful grace that liesIn herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities: For nought to vile that on the earth doth live, But to the earth some special good doth give; nor aught so good, but, strain'd from that fair use, Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse: Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied, And vice sometime's by action dignified.
William Shakespeare
My love is as a fever, longing stillFor that which longer nurseth the disease;Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,The uncertain sickly appetite to please.My reason, the physician to my love,Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,Hath left me, and I desperate now approve,Desire his death, which physic did except.Past cure I am, now reason is past care,And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are,At random from the truth vainly express'd;For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
William Shakespeare
n sooth, I know not why I am so sad:It wearies me; you say it wearies you;But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is born,I am to learn;And such a want-wit sadness makes of me,That I have much ado to know myself.
William Shakespeare
You gotta be cruel to be kind.
William Shakespeare
Diseases desperate grown,By desperate appliance are relieved,Or not at all.
William Shakespeare
Be not self-willed, for thou art much too fairTo be death’s conquest and make worms thine heir.
William Shakespeare
Brutus: Kneel not, gentle Portia.Portia: I should need not, if you were gentle Brutus. Within the bond of marriage, tell me, Brutus, Is it excepted I should know no secrets That appertain to you? Am I yourself But, as it were, in sort or limitation, To keep with you at meals, comfort your bed, And talk to you sometimes? Dwell I but in the suburbs Of your good pleasure? If it be no more, Portia is Brutus' harlot, not his wife.
William Shakespeare
Foul words is but foul wind, and foul wind is but foul breath, and foul breath is noisome; therefore I will depart unkissed.
William Shakespeare
JAQUES: Rosalind is your love's name?ORLANDO: Yes, just.JAQUES: I do not like her name.ORLANDO: There was no thought of pleasing you when she was christened.
William Shakespeare
Hang there like a fruit, my soul, Till the tree die!-Posthumus LeonatusAct V, Scene V
William Shakespeare
Women may fail when there is no strength in man
William Shakespeare
In my mind's eye
William Shakespeare