Samuel Beckett Quotes - Page 8

Quotes about:

• We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment. How many people can boast as much?

  Samuel Beckett

  People, Saint, Punctuality

  Waiting for Godot (1955) act 2

  22 Copy quote

• I try. I fail. I try again. I fail better.

  Samuel Beckett

  Trying, Failing, Try Again

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• To think, when one is no longer young, when one is not yet old, that one is no longer young, that one is not yet old, that is perhaps something.

  Samuel Beckett

  Happy Birthday, Time, Thinking

  Samuel Beckett (1959). “Watt”, Grove Pr

  21 Copy quote

• The pendulum oscillates between these two terms: Suffering-that opens a window on the real and is the main condition of the artistic experience, and Boredom ... that must be considered as the most tolerable because the most durable of human evils.

  Samuel Beckett

  Real, Two, Evil

  Samuel Beckett (1970). “The collected works of Samuel Beckett”

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• The reality of the individualis an incoherent reality and must be expressed incoherently.

  Samuel Beckett

  Reality, Self

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• As it is with the love of the body, so with the friendship of the mind, the full is only reached by admittance to the most retired places.

  Samuel Beckett

  Mind, Body, Retired

  Samuel Beckett (2011). “Murphy”, p.31, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• No painting is more replete than Mondrian's.

  Samuel Beckett

  Art, Painting

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

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• It is right that he too should have his little chronicle, his memories, his reason, and be able to recognize the good in the bad, the bad in the worst, and so grow gently old down all the unchanging days, and die one day like any other day, only shorter.

  Samuel Beckett

  Memories, Should Have, One Day

  Samuel Beckett (1959). “Molloy”, John Calder Pub Ltd

  17 Copy quote

• I hope I am not too old to take it up seriously, nor too stupid about machines to qualify as a commercial pilot. I do not feel like spending the rest of my life writing books that no one will read. It is not as though I wanted to write them.

  Samuel Beckett

  Stupid, Book, Writing

  "The Letters of Samuel Beckett: Volume 1, 1929-1940". Book by Samuel Beckett, 2009.

  7 Copy quote

• When the object is perceived as particular and unique and not merely the member of a family, when it appears independent of any general notion and detached from the sanity of a cause, isolated and inexplicable in the light of ignorance, then and only then may it be a source of enchantment.

  Samuel Beckett

  Art, Ignorance, Independent

  Samuel Beckett (1970). “The collected works of Samuel Beckett”

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• That's what hell must be like, small chat to the babbling of Lethe about the good old days when we wished we were dead.

  Samuel Beckett

  Art, Philosophy, History

  62 Copy quote

• Hold the old holding hand. Hold and be held. Plod on and never recede. Slowly with never a pause plod on and never recede.

  Samuel Beckett

  Hands, Holding Hands, Pauses

  Samuel Beckett (2012). “Company / Ill Seen Ill Said / Worstward Ho / Stirrings Still”, p.58, Faber & Faber

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• Silence, yes, but what silence! For it is all very fine to keep silence, but one has also to consider the kind of silence one keeps.

  Samuel Beckett

  Silence, Kind, Fine

  Samuel Beckett (2012). “The Unnamable”, p.20, Faber & Faber

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• I had seen faces in photographs I might have found beautiful had I known even vaguely in what beauty was supposed to consist. And my father's face, on his death-bolster, had seemed to hint at some form of aesthetics relevant to man. But the faces of the living, all grimace and flush, can they be described as objects?

  Samuel Beckett

  Beautiful, Father, Men

  Samuel Beckett (2007). “The Complete Short Prose of Samuel Beckett, 1929-1989”, p.55, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• I marshalled the words and opened my mouth, thinking I would hear them. But all I heard was a kind of rattle, unintelligible even to me who knew what was intended.

  Samuel Beckett

  Thinking, Mouths, Kind

  Samuel Beckett (2012). “The Expelled/The Calmative/The End with First Love”, p.45, Faber & Faber

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• How time flies when one has fun!

  Samuel Beckett

  Fun, Time Flies, Having Fun

  Samuel Beckett (2012). “The Complete Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett”, p.68, Faber & Faber

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• There is no escape from yesterday because yesterday has deformed us, or been deformed by us. The mood is of no importance. Deformation has taken place.

  Samuel Beckett

  Taken, Yesterday, Mood

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

  7 Copy quote

• I love order. It's my dream. A world where all would be silent and still, and each thing in its last place, under the last dust.

  Samuel Beckett

  Dream, Dust, Order

  Samuel Beckett (2012). “The Complete Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett”, p.116, Faber & Faber

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• What can it matter to me, that I succeed or fail ? The undertaking is none of mine, if they want me to succeed I'll fail, and vice versa, so as not to be rid of my tormentors.

  Samuel Beckett

  Mentor, Vices, Want

  Samuel Beckett (2009). “Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable”, p.341, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Estragon: What about hanging ourselves? Vladimir: Hmm. It'd give us an erection.

  Samuel Beckett

  Giving, Hmm

  Samuel Beckett (2011). “Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts”, p.16, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• it's impossible I should have a mind and I have one

  Samuel Beckett

  Thoughtful, Thinking, Should Have

  Samuel Beckett (1995). “The Complete Short Prose, 1929-1989”, p.232, Grove Press

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• It's so nice to know where you're going, in the early stages. It almost rids you of the wish to go there.

  Samuel Beckett

  Nice, Wish, Stage

  Samuel Beckett (2007). “I Can't Go On, I'll Go On: A Samuel Beckett Reader”, p.242, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• For the only way one can speak of nothing is to speak of it as though it were something, just as the only way one can speak of God is to speak of him as though he were a man, which to be sure he was, in a sense, for a time, and as the only way one can speak of man, even our anthropologists have realized that, is to speak of him as though he were a termite.

  Samuel Beckett

  Time, Men, Way

  Samuel Beckett (2012). “Watt”, p.56, Faber & Faber

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• I don't know why I told this story. I could just as well have told another. Perhaps some other time I'll be able to tell another. Living souls, you will see how alike they are.

  Samuel Beckett

  Soul, Stories, Able

  Samuel Beckett (2007). “I Can't Go On, I'll Go On: A Samuel Beckett Reader”, p.226, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• I open the door of the cell and go. I am so bowed I only see my feet, if I open my eyes, and between my legs a little trail of black dust. I say to myself that the earth is extinguished, though I never saw it lit.

  Samuel Beckett

  Eye, Doors, Cells

  Samuel Beckett (2012). “The Complete Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett”, p.128, Faber & Faber

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