Eric Bentley Quotes

• Ours is the age of substitutes: Instead of language we have jargon; instead of principles, slogans; and instead of genuine ideas, bright suggestions.

  Eric Bentley

  Communication, Ideas, Age

  New Republic 29 Dec. 1952

  53 Copy quote

• If one truly has lost hope, one would not be on hand to say so.

  Eric Bentley

  Hope, Cancer, Hands

  23 Copy quote

• If melodrama is the quintessence of drama, farce is the quintessence of theatre. Melodrama is written. A moving image of the worldis provided by a writer. Farce is acted. The writer's contribution seems not only absorbed but translated.... One cannot imagine melodrama being improvised. The improvised drama was pre-eminently farce.

  Eric Bentley

  Drama, Moving, Theatre

  9 Copy quote

• Like dreams, farces show the disguised fulfillment of repressed wishes.

  Eric Bentley

  Dream, Wish, Farce

  4 Copy quote

• Even in a jungle, lovely flowers will spring up here and there, such being the fecundity of nature, and however badly our pastors and masters run our society, however much they pull to pieces that which they claim to be keeping intact, nature remains fecund, human beings are born with human traits, sometimes human strength outweighs human weakness, and human grace shows itself amid human ugliness. ‘In the bloodiest times,’ as our play has it, ‘there are kind people.’

  Eric Bentley

  Running, Spring, Flower

  Eric Bentley (2008). “Bentley on Brecht”, p.200, Northwestern University Press

  4 Copy quote

• A play has two authors, the playwright and the actor.

  Eric Bentley

  Play, Two, Theatre

  Eric Bentley (1953). “In search of theater”

  4 Copy quote

• Geography is about maps, but biography is about chaps.

  Eric Bentley

  Maps, Biographies, Geography

  24 Copy quote

• Fashion, which elevates the bad to the level of the good, subsequently turns its back on bad and good alike.

  Eric Bentley

  Fashion, Levels, Turns

  Eric Bentley (1986). “The Pirandello Commentaries”, p.9, Northwestern University Press

  7 Copy quote

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