Samuel Beckett

Ireland
13 Apr 1906 // 22 Dec 1989
Writer

Quotes

Next >>

How all becomes clear and simple when one opens an eye on the within, having of course previously exposed it to the without, in order to benefit by the contrast.

The Unnamable
So it is with time, that lightens what is dark, that darkens what is light.

Watt
At last I began to think, that is to say to listen harder.

Molloy
Curiosity is the hair of our habit tending to stand on end. It rarely happens that our attention is not stained in greater or lesser degree by this animal element.

Proust
The more people I meet the happier I become.

Waiting for Godot
For in me there have always been two fools, among others, one asking nothing better than to stay where he is and the other imagining that life might be slightly less horrible a little further on. So that I was never disappointed, so to speak, whatever I did, in this domain. And these inseparable fools I indulged turn about, that they might understand their foolishness.

Molloy
Having oscillated all his life between the torments of a superficial loitering and the horrors of disinterested endeavour, he finds himself at last in a situation where to do nothing exclusively would be an act of the highest value, and significance.

Watt
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.

Molloy
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.

Murphy
From the meanest creature one departs wiser, richer, more conscious of one's blessings.

Waiting for Godot
Next >>
Search

 

On Anger: "For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."
Essays
On Destiny: "Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today."
Human, All Too Human
On Friendship: "A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."
Essays