Samuel Beckett Quotes

Samuel Beckett Quotes

Words are the clothes thoughts wear.

And yet sometimes it seems to me I am there, among the incriminated scenes, tottering under the attributes peculiar to the lords of creation ... Yes, more than once I almost took myself for the other, all but suffered after his fashion, the space of an instant.

All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.

But he had turned, little by little, a disturbance into words, he had made a pillow of old words, for his head.

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

I can't go on, I'll go on.

You're on Earth. There's no cure for that.

The end is in the beginning and yet you go on.

No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found.

The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.

Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

It is suicide to be abroad. But what it is to be at home, ... what it is to be at home? A lingering dissolution.

In the name of Bacon will you chicken me up that egg.
Shall I swallow cave-phantoms?

The more people I meet the happier I become.

The only sin is the sin of being born

They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more.

I shall soon be quite dead at last in spite of all.

Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.

POZZO:
I am blind.
(Silence.)
ESTRAGON:
Perhaps he can see into the future.

Spend the years of learning squandering
Courage for the years of wandering
Through a world politely turning
From the loutishness of learning.

It was long since I had longed for anything and the effect on me was horrible.

Memory and Habit are attributes of the Time cancer. They control the most simple Proustian episode, and an understanding of their mechanism must precede any particular analysis of their application.

Vladimir: That passed the time.
Estragon: It would have passed in any case.
Vladimir: Yes, but not so rapidly.

Was I asleep? Had I slept?

Ever Tried. Ever Failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

But even them, my pains, I understand ill. That must come from my not being all pain and nothing else. There's the rub. Then they recede, or I, till they fill me with amaze and wonder, seen from a better planet. Not often, but I ask no more. Catch-cony life! To be nothing but pain, how that would simplify matters! Omnidolent! Impious dream.

To have been always what I am - and so changed from what I was.

To be always what I am - and so changed from what I was.

Vladimir, be reasonable, you haven't yet tried everything. And I resumed the struggle.

ESTRAGON: Don't touch me! Don't question me! Don't speak to me! Stay with me!
VLADIMIR: Did I ever leave you?
ESTRAGON: You let me go.

Friendship, according to Proust, is the negation of that irremediable solitude to which every human being is condemned.

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.

Ada: And why life? (Pause.) Why life, Henry? (Pause.) Is there anyone about?
Henry: Not a living soul.
Ada: I thought as much. (Pause.) When we longed to have it to ourselves there was always someone. Now that it does not matter the place is deserted.

Lo que hay que evitar, no sé por qué, es el espíritu de sistema.

If you do not love me I shall not be loved.
If I do not love you I shall not love.

Unfathomable mind: now beacon, now sea.

Share Page

Samuel Beckett Wiki

Samuel Beckett At Amazon