Quotes by Playwrights - Page 64

It's a lonely place. Sometimes it's the loneliest place in the world.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Carpenter: "Call Shen Te, someone! She's good!"Shui Ta: "Certainly. She's ruined.
Bertolt Brecht
Mistrust of good success hath done this deed.O hateful error, Melancholy's child,Why dost thou show to the apt thoughts of menThe things that are not? O Error, soon concieved,Thou never com'st unto a happy birth,But kill'st the mother that engendered thee.
William Shakespeare
Finish, good lady; the bright day is done, And we are for the Dark. (Act 5, Scene 2)
William Shakespeare
Receive what cheer you may. The night is long that never finds the day.
William Shakespeare
What art thou Faustus, but a man condemned to die?
Christopher Marlowe
TEIRESIAS: Alas, how terrible is wisdom whenit brings no profit to the man that's wise!This I knew well, but had forgotten it,else I would not have come here.
Sophocles
TEIRESIAS:You have your eyes but see not where you arein sin, nor where you live, nor whom you live with.Do you know who your parents are? Unknowingyou are enemy to kith and kinin death, beneath the earth, and in this life.
Sophocles
JOCASTA:So clear in this case were the oracles,so clear and false. Give them no heed, I say;what God discovers need of, easilyhe shows to us himself.
Sophocles
OEDIPUS:O, O, O, they will all come,all come out clearly! Light of the sun, let melook upon you no more after today!I who first saw the light bred of a matchaccursed, and accursed in my livingwith them I lived with, cursed in my killing.
Sophocles
The love that follows us sometime is our trouble, which still we thank as love.
William Shakespeare
Nothing in his life became him like leaving it.
William Shakespeare
It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge.
William Shakespeare
Come what come may, time and the hour run through the roughest day.
William Shakespeare
Young men's love then lies not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.
William Shakespeare
She gave me for my pains a world of sighs.
William Shakespeare
Then she gave one last burst of music. The white Moon heard it, and she forgot the dawn, and lingered on in the sky. The red rose heard it, and it trembled all over with ecstasy, and opened its petals to the cold morning air. Echo bore it to her purple cavern in the hills, and woke the sleeping shepherds from their dreams. It floated through the reeds of the river, and they carried its message to the sea.
Oscar Wilde
The mission sat in a converted store front on the corner of a medium-busy street. There was a small crowd gathered in front - no real surprise, since they gave out food and clothing, all all you had to do was spend a few moments of your life listening to the good reverend explain why you were going to Hell. It seemed like a pretty good bargain, even to me, but I wasn't hungry.
Jeff Lindsay
It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in suchan inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, theirabsolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lackof style. They affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give usan impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that.Sometimes, however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements ofbeauty crosses our lives. If these elements of beauty are real, thewhole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenlywe find that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of theplay. Or rather we are both. We watch ourselves, and the mere wonderof the spectacle enthralls us.
Oscar Wilde
Those who write ill, and they who ne'er durst write,Turn critics out of mere revenge and spite.
John Dryden
Dear lady, ... dear gentleman, reader, [it's] not right ... to put down this writer on his writing ... And I'll tell you why, too: it hurts, that's why.... People try to understand why writers commit suicide by jumping off boats or by alcoholism or by being heroic continuously or by rope or gun or drug or knife or water, and ... I can tell you straight out, ... it is reading slurring remarks about their writing that drives writers to the grave. Dirty remarks passed by ... dirty but damned nicely educated and very highly-paid ladies and gentlemen have the effect of killing writers. Yes, that's right. Dirty words ... in slick paper magazines read by smart people do assassinate writers. ... And boy let me tell you I am all for it, even when by some ... misunderstanding the dirty words are directed to me rather than to the party really deserving them. Accidents happen, dear clever reviewer or critic, and let it not be said that William Saroyan is one not to see a situation from the point of view of the other party, ... and I shall be the first to defend your right to be critical and even sarcastic, knowing full well that it is not about me and my writing, although my name is by mistake taken in vain by you. ... But go on, go on, do your good clever writing, every one of you, I am home, your are home, and we are each of us not yet on Variety's Necrology list, so if we can't take it, who can?
William Saroyan
Art is personal, criticism shouldn't be.
Alan Dapre
How we lavish our money and worship on Shakespeare without in the least knowing why!
George Bernard Shaw
And if I am further pressed to declare straightforwardly whether I mean to disparage these authorities [who criticize Ibsen], I reply, pointedly, that I do. I affirm that such criticisms are written by men who know as much of political life as I know of navigation. (P. 56)
George Bernard Shaw
I repeat here what you will find in my first chapter, that the only thing that signifies to you in a book is what it means to you, and if your opinion is at variance with that of everyone else in the world it is of no consequence. Your opinion is valid for you. In matters of art people, especially, I think, in America, are apt to accept willingly from professors and critics a tyranny which in matters of government they would rebel against. But in these questions there is no right and wrong. The relation between the reader and his book is as free and intimate as that between the mystic and his God. Of all forms of snobbishness the literary is perhaps the most detestable, and there is no excuse for the fool who despises his fellow-man because he does not share his opinion of the value of a certain book. Pretence in literary appreciation is odious, and no one should be ashamed if a book that the best critics think highly of means nothing to him. On the other hand it is better not to speak ill of such books if you have not read them.
W Somerset Maugham
His forward voice now is to speak well of his friend. His backward voice is to utter foul speeches and to detract.
William Shakespeare
If Makar Denisych was just a clerk or a junior manager, then no one would have dared talk to him in such a condescending, casual tone, but he is a 'writer', and a talentless medio
Anton Chekhov
People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.
W Somerset Maugham
How very much horrible would it be, if achieving everything was so easy! We bear life because there is struggle!
Mehmet Murat ildan
She was not willing to let others narrate her life and her death. While there is one person like her in this world, I will find myself defending both her right to struggle and our obligation to remember.
Ariel Dorfman
In life, there is only one way to exist: To struggle!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Question and AnswerDurban, Birmingham,Cape Town, Alabama,Johannesburg, Watts,The earth aroundStruggling, fighting,Dying--for what?A world to gain.Groping, hoping,Waiting--for what?A world to gain.Dreams kicked asunder,Why not go under?There's a world to gain.But suppose I don't want it,Why take it?To remake it.
Langston Hughes
Everybody walks to somewhere or everybody runs to somewhere simply because those somewheres don’t walk to us or don’t run to us! No struggle happens, no nothing happens!
Mehmet Murat ildan
On top of the world, or in the depths of despair.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
And since nothing whatever happens to us outside our own brain; since nothing hurt us or gives us pleasure except within the brain, the supreme importance of being able to control what goes on in that mysterious brain is patent.
Arnold Bennett
It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain.It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.
Oscar Wilde
I would not put a thief in my mouth to steal my brains.
William Shakespeare
This was just no fun. I wanted my brain back.
Jeff Lindsay
How did that go” [Butler] asked. “Your first lengthy conversation with a girl your own age.”“Fabulous,” said Artemis, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “We’re planning a June wedding.
Eoin Colfer
He liked the girls, liked to hold them around the waist, felt like a man when he did. But as for talking with them, no, no! Then he felt as though he were dealing with another species of human being, in some cases a higher one, in others a lower. He secretly admired the weak, pale, little girl and had picked her to be his wife. That was still the only way he could think of a woman - as a wife. He danced in a very chaste and proper manner, but he heard awful stories about his pals, stories he didn't understand until later. They could dance the waltz backwards around the room in a very indecent way, and they told naughty stories about the girls.
August Strindberg
Oh, you mysterious girls, when you are fifty-two we shall find you out; you must come into the open then. If the mouth has fallen sourly yours the blame: all the meanness your youth concealed have been gathering in your face. But the pretty thoughts and sweet ways and dear, forgotten kindnesses linger there also, to bloom in your twilight like evening primroses.
J.M. Barrie
But where do you live mostly now?"With the lost boys."Who are they?"They are the children who fall out of their perambulators when the nurse is looking the other way. If they are not claimed in seven days they are sent far away to the Neverland to defray expanses. I'm captain."What fun it must be!"Yes," said cunning Peter, "but we are rather lonely. You see we have no female companionship."Are none of the others girls?"Oh no; girls, you know, are much too clever to fall out of their prams.
J.M. Barrie
We always talk about human salvation. But we must first decide whether we deserve salvation?
Mehmet Murat ildan
The place you look at for the salvation must be the science, not the skies!
Mehmet Murat ildan
How else but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in?
Oscar Wilde
To learn to love, one must first learn to see.
Maurice Maeterlinck
Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.
Euripides
In low intelligent ignorant societies, the clever are denigrated and the stupid are belauded; the brainy are stoned and the dull are held in high esteem!
Mehmet Murat ildan
We have to distrust each other. It's our only defense against betrayal.
Tennessee Williams
Time shall unfold what pleated cunning hides: Who cover faults, at last shame them derides.
William Shakespeare
We have to distrust each other. It is our only defence against betrayal.
Tennessee Williams
Betrayal is beautiful.
Jean Genet
Stars hide your fires; let not light see my black and deep desires: The eyes wink at the hand; yet let that be which the eye fears, when it is done, to see
William Shakespeare
We are not wounded so deeply when betrayed by the things we hope for as when betrayed by things we try our best to despise.In such betrayal comes the dagger in the back.
Yukio Mishima
Do I raise the dead when I put him behind bars? Then what'll I do it for? We used to shoot a man who acted like a dog, but honor was real there, you were protecting something. But here? This is the land of the great big dogs, you don't love a man here, you eat him!
Arthur Miller
What is honour? a word. What is in that word honour? what is that honour? air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? he that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? no. Doth he hear it? no.
William Shakespeare
Virtue is the fount whence honor springs.
Christopher Marlowe
Thy life is safe while any god saves mine.
Sophocles
[Alexander von] Humboldt showers us with true treasures.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Mine honor is my life; both grow in one.Take honor from me, and my life is done.
William Shakespeare