William Saroyan Quotes

Quotes about:

• I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia . See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia.

  William Saroyan

  Prayer, War, Home

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  129 Copy quote

• Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.

  William Saroyan

  Motivational, Death, Anger

  William Saroyan (1934). “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze, and Other Stories”, p.13, New Directions Publishing

  80 Copy quote

• In the time of your life, live—so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it."

  William Saroyan

  Life, Sorrow, Add

  William Saroyan (2009). “The Time of Your Life”, p.3, A&C Black

  82 Copy quote

• It is simply in the nature of Armenian to study, to learn, to question, to speculate, to discover, to invent, to revise, to restore, to preserve, to make, and to give.

  William Saroyan

  Giving, Study, Armenians

  "First Visit to Armenia". Book by William Saroyan, 1935.

  73 Copy quote

• In the end, today is forever, yesterday is still today, and tomorrow is already today.

  William Saroyan

  Yesterday, Forever, Today

  William Saroyan (1968). “I used to believe I had forever, now I'm not so sure”

  63 Copy quote

• Unless a man has pity he is not truly a man. If a man has not wept at the worlds pain he is only half a man, and there will always be pain in the world, knowing this does not mean that a man shall dispair. A good man will seek to take pain out of things. A foolish man will not even notice it, except in himself, and the poor unfortunate evil man will drive pain deeper into things and spread it about wherever he goes.

  William Saroyan

  Pain, Mean, Men

  70 Copy quote

• Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure.

  William Saroyan

  Inspirational, Motivational, Wisdom

  60 Copy quote

• Be grateful for yourself...be thankful.

  William Saroyan

  Gratitude, Grateful, Being Thankful

  70 Copy quote

• Everybody has got to die, but I have always believed an exception would be made in my case.

  William Saroyan

  Inspiration, Would Be, Famous Last Words

  William Saroyan, William E. Justice (2008). “He flies through the air with the greatest of ease: a William Saroyan reader”, Heyday Books

  31 Copy quote

• In the time of your life, live - so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches. Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding-place and let it be free and unashamed...In the time of your life, live - so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.

  William Saroyan

  Sorrow, Add, Delight

  The Time of Your Life (1939)

  27 Copy quote

• The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.

  William Saroyan

  Happiness, Gratitude, Cheer

  39 Copy quote

• The role of art is to make a world which can be inhabited.

  William Saroyan

  Art, Roles, World

  Broadway memorial tribute to Saroyan, reported in The New York Times, October 31, 1983.

  51 Copy quote

• Although I write in English, and despite the fact that I'm from America, I consider myself an Armenian writer. The words I use are in English, the surroundings I write about are American, but the soul, which makes me write, is Armenian. This means I am an Armenian writer and deeply love the honor of being a part of the family of Armenian wrtiters.

  William Saroyan

  Writing, Mean, America

  47 Copy quote

• I have always been a Laugher, disturbing people who are not laughers, upsetting whole audiences at theatres... I laugh, that's all. I love to laugh. Laugher to me is being alive. I have had rotten times, and I have laughed through them. Even in the midst of the very worst times I have laughed.

  William Saroyan

  Laughing, People, Upset

  William Saroyan (1976). “Sons come and go, mothers hang in forever”, McGraw-Hill Companies

  59 Copy quote

• When I began to wait to live I really began to wait to die.

  William Saroyan

  Waiting, Dies

  William Saroyan (1967). “Short Drive, Sweet Chariot”

  11 Copy quote

• I care so much about everything that I care about nothing.

  William Saroyan

  Care, I Care

  10 Copy quote

• I'm no Armenian. I'm an American. Well, the truth is I am both and neither. I love Armenia and I love America and I belong to both, but I am only this: an inhabitant of the earth, and so are you, whoever you are. I tried to forget Armenia but I couldn't do it.

  William Saroyan

  America, Armenia, Earth

  William Saroyan (2005). “Essential Saroyan”

  9 Copy quote

• Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding-place and let it be free and unashamed. Place in matter and in flesh the least of the values, for these are things that hold death and must pass away. Discover in all things that which shines and is beyond corruption. Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world.

  William Saroyan

  Heart, Shining, Sorrow

  Eugene O'Neill, Maxwell Anderson, Sidney Coe Howard, DuBose Heyward, Elmer Rice (1988). “Famous American plays of the 1920s and the 1930s”

  32 Copy quote

• Remember that every man is a variation of yourself

  William Saroyan

  Men, Variation, Remember

  William Saroyan (2009). “The Time of Your Life”, p.3, A&C Black

  14 Copy quote

• Doctors don't know everything really. They understand matter, not spirit. And you and I live in the spirit.

  William Saroyan

  Health, Doctors, Matter

  13 Copy quote

• It takes a lot of rehearsing for a man to be himself.

  William Saroyan

  Life, Men, Rehearsing

  William Saroyan (2009). “The Time of Your Life”, p.55, A&C Black

  10 Copy quote

• Of course if you like your kids, if you love them from the moment they begin, you yourself begin all over again, in them, with them, and so there is something more to the world again.

  William Saroyan

  Children, Kids, World

  "Here Comes There Goes You Know Who". Book b yWilliam Saroyan, 1961.

  11 Copy quote

• All comedians are people who really deeply consider the human experience not only a dirty trick perpetrated by a totally meaningless procedure of accidents, but an unbearable ordeal every day, which can be made tolerable only by mockery in one form or another.

  William Saroyan

  Dirty, People, Comedian

  35 Copy quote

• We didn't say anything because there was such an awful lot to say, and no language to say it in.

  William Saroyan

  Say Anything, Awful, Language

  William Saroyan (2013). “My Name Is Aram”, p.38, Courier Corporation

  22 Copy quote

• I am interested in madness. I believe it is the biggest thing in the human race, and the most constant. How do you take away from a man his madness without also taking away his identity? Are we sure it is desirable for a man's spirit not to be at war with itself, or that it is better to be serene and ready to go to dinner than to be excited and unwilling to stop for a cup of coffee, even?

  William Saroyan

  War, Coffee, Believe

  "Short Drive, Sweet Chariot". Book by William Saroyan, 1966.

  38 Copy quote

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