Samuel Beckett Quotes - Page 5

Quotes about:

• God is a witness that cannot be sworn.

  Samuel Beckett

  Witness

  Samuel Beckett (2007). “I Can't Go On, I'll Go On: A Samuel Beckett Reader”, p.101, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• The fact is, it seems, that the most you can hope is to be a little less, in the end, the creature you were in the beginning, and the middle.

  Samuel Beckett

  Littles, Facts, Ends

  Samuel Beckett (2007). “I Can't Go On, I'll Go On: A Samuel Beckett Reader”, p.256, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• To every man his little cross. Till he dies. And is forgotten.

  Samuel Beckett

  Men, Littles, Waiting For Godot

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• The essential is never to arrive anywhere, never to be anywhere. The essential is to go on squirming forever at the edge of the line, as long as there are waters and banks and ravening in heaven a sporting God to plague his creature, per pro his chosen shits. I've swallowed three hooks and am still hungry. Hence the howls. What a joy to know where one is, and where one will stay, without being there. Nothing to do but strech out comfortably on the rack, in the blissful knowledge you are nobody for eternity.

  Samuel Beckett

  Long, Water, Joy

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• Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards, I take the air there willingly, perhaps more willingly than elsewhere, when take the air I must.

  Samuel Beckett

  Death, Air, Dying

  First Love (1973) p. 8

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• I have always been amazed at my contemporaries’ lack of finesse, I whose soul writhed from morning to night, in the mere quest of itself.

  Samuel Beckett

  Morning, Night, Soul

  Samuel Beckett (1995). “The Complete Short Prose, 1929-1989”, p.48, Grove Press

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• I, of whom I know nothing, I know my eyes are open, because of the tears that pour from them unceasingly.

  Samuel Beckett

  Eye, Self, Tears

  Samuel Beckett (2012). “The Unnamable”, p.16, Faber & Faber

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• We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. But habit is a great deadener.

  Samuel Beckett

  Air, Waiting For Godot, Cry

  Samuel Beckett (2012). “The Complete Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett”, p.81, Faber & Faber

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• How can one better magnify the Almighty than by sniggering with him at his little jokes, particularly the poorer ones?

  Samuel Beckett

  God, Humorous, Atheism

  Samuel Beckett (2012). “The Complete Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett”, p.144, Faber & Faber

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• Mysterious affair, electricity.

  Samuel Beckett

  Science, Mysterious, Affair

  Samuel Beckett (2007). “Ends and Odds”, p.81, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• It sometimes happens and will sometimes happen again that I forget who I am and strut before my eyes, like a stranger.

  Samuel Beckett

  Eye, Who I Am, Ego

  Samuel Beckett (2009). “Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable”, p.37, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• The human eyelid is not teartight (happily for the human eye).

  Samuel Beckett

  Eye, Sorrow, Tears

  Samuel Beckett (2012). “Murphy”, p.51, Faber & Faber

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• There are two moments worthwhile in writing, the one when you start and the other when you throw it in the waste-paper basket.

  Samuel Beckett

  Writing, Two, Paper

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• Yesterday is not a milestone that has been passed, but a daystone on the beaten track of the years, and irremediably part of us, within us, heavy and dangerous. We are not merely more weary because of yesterday, we are other, no longer what we were before the calamity of yesterday.

  Samuel Beckett

  Years, Yesterday, Track

  Samuel Beckett, Georges Duthuit (1965). “Proust”

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• Words fail, there are times when even they fail.

  Samuel Beckett

  Time, Language, Failing

  Samuel Beckett (2013). “Happy Days: A Play in Two Acts”, p.26, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• The bicycle is a great good. But it can turn nasty, if ill employed.

  Samuel Beckett

  Cycling, Nasty, Ill

  Samuel Beckett (2011). “Mercier and Camier”, p.52, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• The blind have no notion of time. The things of time are hidden from them too.

  Samuel Beckett

  Time, Blind, Notion

  Samuel Beckett (2011). “Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts”, p.85, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Suffering is the main condition of the artistic experience.

  Samuel Beckett

  Suffering, Artistic, Conditions

  Samuel Beckett (1931). “Proust”

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• My characters have nothing. I'm working with impotence, ignorance... that whole zone of being that has always been set aside by artists as something unusable - something by definition incompatible with art.

  Samuel Beckett

  Art, Ignorance, Character

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• There is no use indicting words, they are no shoddier than what they peddle.

  Samuel Beckett

  Use

  Malone Dies (1958)

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• There's man all over for you, blaming on his boots the fault of his feet.

  Samuel Beckett

  Life, Hate, Men

  Samuel Beckett (2012). “Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts”, p.27, Faber & Faber

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• I shall state silences more competently than ever a better man spangled the butterflies of vertigo.

  Samuel Beckett

  Butterfly, Men, Silence

  Samuel Beckett, Ruby Cohn (1983). “Disjecta: miscellaneous writings and a dramatic fragment”, Riverrun Pr

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• But I know what darkness is, it accumulates, thickens, then suddenly bursts and drowns everything.

  Samuel Beckett

  Darkness, Knows

  Samuel Beckett (2009). “Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable”, p.184, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• If I had the use of my body, I would throw it out the window.

  Samuel Beckett

  Use, Body, Window

  Malone Dies (1958) p. 44

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• We all are born mad. Some remain so.

  Samuel Beckett

  Mad, Waiting For Godot, Godot

  'Waiting for Godot' (1955) act 2

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