—Me
If you can’t join ‘em, beat ‘em.
—Me
Of all the thirty-six alternatives, running away is best.
—Unknown
I have discovered that most people have no one to talk to, no one, that is, who really wants to listen.
—Walker Percy, The Moviegoer
If you keep your mouth shut, people will invariably believe you know more than you do.
—Me
The older one grows the more one likes indecency.
—Virginia Woolf
I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.
—Clarence Darrow
Laws should be like clothes. They should be made to fit the people they serve.
—Clarence Darrow
The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
—Clarence Darrow
The world is made up for the most part of morons and natural tyrants, sure of themselves, strong in their own opinions, never doubting anything.
—Clarence Darrow
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I'm beginning to believe it.
—Clarence Darrow
Don’t make friends with people you don’t know.
—Anonymous
I was never lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.
—Daniel Boone
Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness.
—Allen Ginsberg
The creative person is the one who does not scramble out of the basket when the balloon takes off unattended.
Gossip is dying out because fewer and fewer people care to talk about anything besides themselves.
My arse contemplates those who talk behind my back.
Baby, they were plenty smart when they made you beautiful.
Ugarte: You despise me, don't you?
Rick: Well, if I gave you any thought I probably would.
There are no good girls gone wrong, just bad girls found out.
If at first you don't succeed, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.
Imagination is a force of nature. Is this not enough to make a person full of ecstasy? Imagination, imagination, imagination. It converts to actual. It sustains, it alters, it redeems!
I have no special talent, I am only passionately curious.
The road to wisdom?—Well, it's plain
and simple to express:
Err
and err
and err again
but less
and less
and less.
The higher the buildings, the lower the morals.
Work is more fun than fun.
The trouble with life is that it’s so daily.
—Me
Gossip is dying out because fewer and fewer people care to talk about anything besides themselves.
—Mason Cooley
My arse contemplates those who talk behind my back.
—Francis Picabia
Baby, they were plenty smart when they made you beautiful.
—James Gleason and Norman Houston, The Broadway Melody
Ugarte: You despise me, don't you?
Rick: Well, if I gave you any thought I probably would.
—Julius J. Epstein, Casablanca
There are no good girls gone wrong, just bad girls found out.
—Mae West
If at first you don't succeed, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.
—W. C. Fields
Imagination is a force of nature. Is this not enough to make a person full of ecstasy? Imagination, imagination, imagination. It converts to actual. It sustains, it alters, it redeems!
—Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King
I have no special talent, I am only passionately curious.
—Albert Einstein
The road to wisdom?—Well, it's plain
and simple to express:
Err
and err
and err again
but less
and less
and less.
—Piet Hein
The higher the buildings, the lower the morals.
—Noel Coward
Work is more fun than fun.
—Noel Coward
The trouble with life is that it’s so daily.
The world is full of intelligent people who are not really trying to be flattered. What they really want is to be understood.
—Arnold Newman
“There is no use trying,” said Alice. “One can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
—Lewis Carroll
Next, when you are describing
A shape, or sound, or tint;
Don’t state the matter plainly,
But put it in a hint;
And learn to look at all things
With a sort of mental squint.
— Lewis Carroll, Poeta Fit, Non Nascitur
What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.
— Martha Graham
They never raised a statue to a critic.
— Martha Graham
19. Accept loss forever
— Jack Kerouac, Belief and Technique for Modern Prose
Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.
— Oscar Wilde
The police never think it’s as funny as you do.
— Tee-Shirt Slogan
American critics are like American universities. They both have dull and half-dead faculties.
— Edward Albee
Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.
— Martha Graham
What you need is sustained outrage . . . there’s far too much unthinking respect given to authority.
— Molly Ivins
An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.
— Buddha
I will never be below the title.
— Bette Davis
Some people are like one-way streets; and I’ve been driving those roads for years.
— Me
The highest prize we can receive for creative work is the joy of being creative. Creative effort spent for any other reason than the joy of being in that light filled space, love, god, whatever we want to call it, is lacking in integrity ...
— Marianne Williamson
One good thing about getting old: you can’t bend over to kiss ass any more.
— Me
To draw, you must close your eyes and sing.
— Pablo Picasso
Think left and think right
and think low and think high.
Oh, the thinks you can think up
if only you try!
— Dr Seuss, Oh, the Thinks You Can Think!
I never vote for anyone. I always vote against.
— W. C. Fields
Creativity makes a leap, then looks to see where it is.
— Mason Cooley
All the terms used in the science books, 'law,' 'necessity,' 'order,' 'tendency,' and so on, are really unintellectual ... The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in the fairy books, 'charm,' 'spell,' 'enchantment.' They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery. A tree grows fruit because it is a magic tree. Water runs downhill because it is bewitched. The sun shines because it is bewitched. I deny altogether that this is fantastic or even mystical. We may have some mysticism later on; but this fairy-tale language about things is simply rational and agnostic.
— G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908)
An actor's a guy, who if you ain't talking about him, ain't listening.
— Marlon Brando, The Observer (1956)
Acting is merely the art of keeping a large number of people from coughing.
— Ralph Richardson
Real success comes not from being invited onto the yacht, but from being able to paddle one’s own canoe.
— Hugh MacLeod
Selfishness must always be forgiven, you know, because there is no hope of a cure.
— Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
The terrible state of public education has paid huge dividends in ignorance. Huge. We now have a country that can be told blatant lies — easily checkable, blatant lies — and I’m not talking about the covert workings of the CIA. When we have a terrorist attack, on September 11, 2001 with 19 men — 15 of them are Saudis — and five minutes later the whole country thinks they’re from Iraq — how can you have faith in the public? This is an easily checkable fact. The whole country is like the O.J. Simpson jurors.
— Fran Lebowitz
The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get much sleep.
— Woody Allen
Draw me a sheep!
— Antoine de Saint Exupéry, The Little Prince
When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.
— Tennessee Williams, Camino Real
If God lived on earth, people would break His windows.
— Fiddler on the Roof
Oh, you young people act like old men. You have no fun.
— Josephine Baker, Last Words
What a strange machine man is! You fill him with bread, wine, fish, and radishes, and out comes sighs, laughter, and dreams.
— Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek
Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listening, everything must be said again.
— Andre Gide
Please don't go. We'll eat you up. We love you so.
— Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are
If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, "Thank You", that would suffice.
— Meister Eckhart
Maverick is a word which appeals to me more than misfit. Maverick is active, misfit is passive.
— Alan Rickman
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
— John F. Kennedy
Prayer must never be answered: if it is, it ceases to be prayer, and becomes a correspondence.
— Oscar Wilde
I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle!
— Lewis Carroll
Alice in Wonderland
If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.
— Lewis Carroll
Contrariwise, if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.
— Lewis Carroll
I like people and I like them to like me, but I wear my heart where God put it, on the inside.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
I do not fear Satan half so much as I fear those who fear him.
— Saint Teresa of Avila
Because it is not what you are nor what you have been that God looks at with his merciful eyes, but what you desire to be.
— The Cloud of Unknowing
Why fit in when you were born to stand out?
— Dr Seuss
It is a great art to saunter.
— Henry David Thoreau
I have no objection to any person’s religion, be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any other person, because that other person don’t believe it also.
— Herman Melville
Moby Dick, Chapter 17
To be gentle, tolerant, wise and reasonable requires a goodly portion of toughness.
— Peter Ustinov
I am a visual man. I watch, watch, watch. I understand things through my eyes.
— Henri Cartier-Bresson
One should make movies innocently — the way Adam and Eve named the animals, their first day in the garden…Learn from your own interior vision of things, as if there had never been a D.W.Griffith, or a [Sergei] Eisenstein, or a [John] Ford, or a [Jean] Renoir, or anybody.
— Orson Welles
I think there's so much good in the worst of us, and so many of the worst of us get the best of us, that the rest of us aren't even worth talking about.
— Gracie Allen
The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews
Not to be born is the best for man
The second best is a formal order
The dance’s pattern, dance while you can.
Dance, dance, for the figure is easy
The tune is catching and will not stop
Dance till the stars come down with the rafters
Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
— W. H. Auden
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
— W. H. Auden
People always make the mistake of thinking art is created for them. But really, art is a private language for sophisticates to congratulate themselves on their superiority to the rest of the world. As my artist’s statement explains, my work is utterly incomprehensible and is therefore full of deep significance.
— Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
There's no hope, but I may be wrong.
— Pete Seeger
NPR: Weekend Edition (July 2, 2005)
You will know your vocation by the joy that it brings you. You will know. You will know when it's right.
— Dorothy Day
I believe the universe created us — we are an audience for miracles. In that sense, I guess, I'm religious.
— Ray Bradbury, AARP Magazine, 2008
If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.
— Ray Bradbury
We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.
— Ray Bradbury
A life's work should be based on love.
— Ray Bradbury
The best definition of man is: a being that goes on two legs and is ungrateful.
— Fyodor Dostoevsky
A self is always becoming.
— Madeleine L'Engle
A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So he loses touch with reality, and lives in a world of illusion.
— Alan Watts
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.
— Edward Lear
The Owl and the Pussycat
We are all meant to be mothers of God, for God is always needing to be born.
— Meister Eckhart
Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall
— Alan Bennett
Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one.
— Sam Rayburn
God is best known in not knowing him.
— St Augustine
A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.
— William Shakespeare
Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.
— Edgar Degas
If you don't know where you're going, you might wind up someplace else.
— Yogi Berra
People ask, how do you cope, and all I can say is that you do.
— Alan Bates
Art is not a thing — it is a way.
— Elbert Hubbard
The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.
— Julia Margaret Cameron
I wasn't really naked. I simply didn't have any clothes on.
— Josephine Baker
I am, at heart, a gentleman.
— Marlene Dietrich
A beauty is a woman you notice; a charmer is one who notices you.
— Adlai Stevenson
Astonish me!
— Me
Bats have no bankers and they do not drink and cannot be arrested and pay no tax and, in general, bats have it made.
— John Berryman
Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again?
— A. A. Milne
I think I like it here.
— Andy Griffith
As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.
— George Washington
I discovered last night that I've passed my use-by date.
— Me
The older I get, the more I believe in what I can't explain or understand, even more than the things that are explainable and understandable.
— Lillian Gish
No performer should attempt to bite off a red-hot iron unless he has a good set of teeth.
— Harry Houdini
Always do whatever's next.
— George Carlin
I have looked into your eyes with my eyes. I have put my heart near your heart.
— Pope John XXIII
Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.
— Lord Acton
When a man tells you he got rich through hard work, ask him: "Whose?"
— Don Marquis
Forgiveness is the final form of love.
— Reinhold Niebuhr
Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The mightiest love was granted him
Love that does not expect to be loved.
— Jorge Luis Borges on Baruch Spinoza
Everything that goes into my mouth seems to make me fat, everything that comes out of my mouth embarrasses me.
— Gabriel Garcia Marquez
I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability.
— Oscar Wilde
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
— Mahatma Gandhi
Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.
— Dr. Seuss
Theatre is the art form of the present: it exists only in the present and then it's gone. That stands in opposition to our capitalist society, which has us continually in the near future ("I want it"), or the recent past ("I've bought it and now I have to want something else"). When theatre is good, it feeds people in a very different way.
— Simon McBurney
May you never grow too old for wishes, and may the best of them come true.
— Me
A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.
— Victor Hugo
But I believe that since my life began
The most I’ve had is just a talent to amuse
Hey ho, if love were all ...
— Noel Coward
For all that has been — Thanks. For all that shall be — Yes.
— Dag Hammarskjöld
When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.
— Paulo Coelho
"To forgive oneself"—? No, that doesn't work: we have to be forgiven. But we can only believe this is possible if we ourselves can forgive.
— Dag Hammarskjöld
Original thought is like original sin: both happened before you were born to people you could not have possibly met.
— Fran Lebowitz
As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.
— Socrates
I couldn't wait for success, so I went ahead without it.
— Jonathan Winters
My father had a deep and lifelong contempt for politicians in general ("They tell lies," he used to say with wonder, "even when they don't have to").
— Gore Vidal
I'm not interested in money, I just want to be wonderful.
— Marilyn Monroe
"Oh bliss, bliss and heaven ... Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh ... And then, a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal, or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now ... I knew such lovely pictures" (This was said while listening to a violin concerto by Geoffrey Plautus, played by Odysseus Choerilos).
— Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
A determined soul will do more with a rusty monkey wrench than a loafer will accomplish with all the tools in a machine shop.
— Robert Hughes
The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.
— Robert Hughes
The spiritual life is not a special career, involving abstraction from the world of things. It is a part of every man's life; and until he has realised it he is not a complete human being, he has not entered into possession of all his powers.
— Evelyn Underhill
Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
—G. K. Chesterton
The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.
— Paul Valery
Now if you'll please excuse me... I have a show to do.
— Brother Boy, Sordid Lives, by Del Shores
Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.
— William James
I just made pictures I would've liked to see.
— Billy Wilder
Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
— William James
I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.
— Carl Sandburg
I like to think of them out there in the dark, watching us. Sometimes we'll do something and they'll laugh. Sometimes we'll do something and they'll cry. And maybe, one day we'll do something so magnificent, the whole universe will get goosebumps.
— Jane Wagner, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe
When you come into the theater, you have to be willing to say, "We're all here to undergo a communion, to find out what the hell is going on in this world." If you're not willing to say that, what you get is entertainment instead of art, and poor entertainment at that.
— David Mamet
I think, by and large, the level of acting is mediocre. When I go to the theatre, I get so angry. I don't go.
— Uta Hagen
The first rule of hurricane coverage is that every broadcast must begin with palm trees bending in the wind.
— Carl Hiaasen
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny..."
— Isaac Asimov
America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind.
— Norman Mailer
The difference between man and dog? One will eventually recognize abuse; and when he does, he will turn his back and cease to give a damn.
— Me
Sid Caesar once gave me the best advice about cutting: "If they don't hear it, they never know you wrote it."
— Neil Simon
Let me listen to me and not to them.
— Gertrude Stein
We are all of us failures; at least, the best of us are.
— James M. Barrie
Start by doing what is necessary, then do what's possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.
— Francis of Assisi
Tell the truth, but tell it slant.
— Emily Dickinson
People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.
— George Bernard Shaw
Please don't go. We'll eat you up. We love you so.
— Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are
There is no profession without craft, except yours.... As an actor you need craft.
— Stella Adler
The word theatre comes from the Greeks. It means the seeing place. It is the place people come to see the truth about life and the social situation.
— Stella Adler
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.
— Groucho Marx
The older I get, the more I believe in what I can't explain or understand.
— Lillian Gish
A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.
— Lao Tzu
Those who create are rare; those who cannot are numerous. Therefore, the latter are stronger.
— Coco Chanel
Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can plan weird; that's easy. What's hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.
— Charles Mingus
When we are angry or depressed in our creativity, we have misplaced our power. We have allowed someone else to determine our worth, and then we are angry at being undervalued.
— Julia Margaret Cameron
The new meaning of soul is creativity and mysticism. These will become the foundation of the new psychological type and with him or her will come the new civilization.
— Otto Rank
When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.
— Albert Einstein
What makes loneliness an anguish is not that I have no one to share my burden, but this: I have only my own burden to bear.
— Dag Hammarskjold
The surest cure for vanity is loneliness.
— Tom Wolfe
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
— Marcel Proust
I hope that posterity will judge me kindly, not only as to the things which I have explained, but also to those which I have intentionally omitted so as to leave to others the pleasure of discovery.
— Rene Descartes
Life is big. Too many people live it small.
— Me
I want to give the audience a hint of a scene. No more than that. Give them too much and they won't contribute anything themselves. Give them just a suggestion and you get them working with you. That's what gives the theater meaning: when it becomes a social act.
— Orson Welles
If you really want to help the American theater, don't be an actress, darling. Be an audience.
— Tallulah Bankhead
Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
— Anton Chekhov
It is not length of life, but depth of life.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
I'm looking for one of two things and sometimes they dovetail: I'm looking to go into a theatre and see a certain kind of show. And if it's not there, I'd like to do it myself so it would be there.
— Harold Prince
I've cried, and you'd think I'd be better for it, but the sadness just sleeps, and it stays in my spine the rest of my life.
— Conor Oberst
Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.
— Brendan Gill
The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.
— Charles Dickens
Writers are lampposts and critics are dogs. Ask lampposts what they think about dogs. Does the dog hurt the lamppost?
— Paulo Coelho
Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.
— Carl Jung
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
— Socrates
One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
If I asked for a cup of coffee, someone would search for the double meaning.
— Mae West
Think before you speak is criticism's motto; speak before you think, creation's.
— E. M. Forster
I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me.
— Hunter S. Thompson
Man, you don't know how I felt that afternoon when I heard that voice and it was my own voice.
— Muddy Waters
Boredom: the desire for desires.
— Leo Tolstoy
A fool and his money are soon elected.
— Will Rogers
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
— Thomas Jefferson
You can observe a lot by just watching.
— Yogi Berra
If you are in a spaceship that is traveling at the speed of light, and you turn on the headlights, does anything happen?
— Steven Wright
We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.
— Bertrand Russell
If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull.
— W. C. Fields
I loathe bad theater and most theatre is very bad because it's repetitious, unexciting and, dangerously, it is sometimes praised for those things.
— Fiona Shaw
Do you ever get the feeling that the only reason we have elections is to find out if the polls were right?
— Robert Orben
"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting."
— T. H. White, The Once and Future King
She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.
— Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music.
— Thomas Carlyle
The more I do, the more frightened I get. But that is essential. Otherwise why would I go on doing it?
— Judi Dench
Be assured that if you knew all, you would pardon all.
— Thomas à Kempis
The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.
— Goethe
Happiness is doing it rotten your own way.
— Isaac Asimov
Good theatre is like a well-planned orgy in which all the participants reach climax and go away sated. Bad theatre is not. I was going to say something else about bad theatre, but that would have been rude.
— Me
I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.
— Abraham Lincoln
My son has died of AIDS.
— Nelson Mandela
Next to a circus there ain't nothing that packs up and tears out faster than the Christmas spirit.
— Kin Hubbard
All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.
— T. E. Lawrence
And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.
— Joel 2:28, KJV
Start every day off with a smile and get it over with.
— W. C. Fields
If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.
— Dorothy Parker
— Noel Coward
— Ambrose Bierce
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.
— Frederick Douglass
The mightiest love was granted him Love that does not expect to be loved.
— Jorge Luis Borges
Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first.
— Arthur Schopenhauer
The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.
— Goethe
A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.
— Wayne Gretzky
When I was born I was so surprised I didn't talk for a year and a half.
— Gracie Allen
If you want me to sing this Christmas song with the feeling and the meaning, you better see if you can locate that check.
— Mahalia Jackson
A poet should leave traces of his passage, not proofs. Traces alone engender dreams.
— René Char
One of the virtues of being very young is that you don't let the facts get in the way of your imagination.
— Sam Levenson
The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.
— Tom Wolfe
If you asked me for my New Year Resolution, it would be to find out who I am.
— Cyril Cusack
Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.
— Cecil Beaton
I don't believe in fate or destiny. I believe in various degrees of hatred, paranoia, and abandonment. However much of that gets heaped upon you doesn't matter—it's only a matter of how much you can take and what it does to you.
— Henry Rollins
Have you forgotten what we were like then
when we were still first rate
and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth
— Frank O'Hara, Animals
A friend who dies, it's something of you who dies.
— Gustave Flaubert
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
— Oscar Wilde
You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.
— C. S. Lewis
Perhaps I am stronger than I think.
— Thomas Merton
Respect each man you meet until he has earned your disrespect; trust no man until he has earned your trust.
— Me
Sometimes God turns His back on His people and breaks wind. And the stench clouds the globe!
—Peter Barnes, The Ruling Class
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.
— Walt Whitman
Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.
— W. Somerset Maugham
Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.
— Anton Chekhov
Depth must be hidden. Where? On the surface.
— Hugo von Hofmannsthal
You can get through life with bad manners, but it's easier with good manners.
— Lillian Gish
Most beautiful dumb girls think they are smart and get away with it, because other people, on the whole, aren't much smarter.
— Louise Brooks
Maybe I am not very human—what I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house.
— Edward Hopper
There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is a stranger in his own house.
— Eric Hoffer
If you want to be happy, be.
— Leo Tolstoy
Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.
— Hermann Hesse
The Green room is smokin'
And the Plaza's burning down
Throw my baby out the window
And let the joint burn down
All because it's Carnival Time
— Al Johnson
Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
— T. S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday
Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
I loathe bad theater and most theatre is very bad because it's repetitious, unexciting and, dangerously, it is sometimes praised for those things.
— Fiona Shaw
Aarrgghh!
— Charles Shultz
Democracy! Bah! When I hear that I reach for my feather boa!
— Allen Ginsberg
Concentrate, don't embroider.
— Spencer Tracy
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us.
— Marianne Williamson
Facing it, always facing it, that's the way to get through. Face it.
— Joseph Conrad
I'm not confused. I'm just well mixed.
— Robert Frost
I'm afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.
— Aldous Huxley
Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something.
— Gertrude Stein
We feel and know that we are eternal.
— Baruch Spinoza
When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.
— Thomas Jefferson
Directing a play for the theatre seems to me to be akin to the mating ritual of the Mantis species. And I am Mr. Mantis.
— Me
It was not till quite late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say: 'I don't know.
— W. Somerset Maugham
Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.
— William Feather
It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.
— Virginia Woolf
Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.
— Bertolt Brecht
Get a stage tone, darling, an energy. Never go on stage without your motor running.
— Stella Adler
If God could make a visit—
Or ever took a Nap—
So not to see us—but they say
Himself—a Telescope
Perennial beholds us—
Myself would run away
From Him—and Holy Ghost—and All—
But there’s the “Judgement Day”!
— Emily Dickinson
It is time to get drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of Time, get drunk; get drunk without stopping! On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you wish.
— Charles Baudelaire
And all was as it should be. I was young.
— Edwin Arlington Robinson, Isaac and Archibald
They that have power to hurt and will do none,
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow,
They rightly do inherit heaven's graces...
— William Shakespeare, Sonnet 94
The whole secret of existence is to have no fear. Never fear what will become of you, depend on no one. Only the moment you reject all help are you freed.
— Buddha
It is a suggestive idea to track those worn feet backward through all the paths they have trodden ever since they were the tender and rosy little feet of a baby, and (cold as they now are) were kept warm in his mother's hand.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Marble Faun
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.
— Groucho Marx
You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it.
— Art Buchwald
There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud.
— Carl Sandburg
An actor's a guy, who if you ain't talking about him, ain't listening.
— Marlon Brando
The life of the creative man is lead, directed and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes.
— Susan Sontag
The best way out is always through.
— Robert Frost
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.
— John 13:34
Why are we so full of restraint? Why do we not give in all directions? Is it fear of losing ourselves? Until we do lose ourselves there is no hope of finding ourselves.
— Henry Miller
Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.
— Ambrose Bierce
America... just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.
— Hunter S. Thompson
Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.
— Mae West
When the heroes go off the stage, the clowns come on.
— Heinrich Heine
How did it get so late so soon?
Its night before its afternoon.
December is here before its June.
My goodness how the time has flewn.
How did it get so late so soon?
— Dr. Seuss
Always do whatever's next.
— George Carlin
The only horrible thing in the world is ennui, Dorian. That is the one sin for which there is no forgiveness.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
