Samuel Beckett Quotes (50 Quotes)

Estragon: People are bloody ignorant apes.

How is it that of the four Evangelists only one speaks of a thief being save. The four of them were there-or therabouts-and only one speaks of a thief being saved.

To every man his little cross. Till he dies. And is forgotten.

Do we mean love, when we say love?

Do you always believe in the life to come Mine was always that.

I have my faults, but changing my tune is not one of them.

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

Absolute virtue is as sure to kill a man as absolute vice is, let alone the dullness of it and the pomposities of it

I am interested in the shape of ideas even if I do not believe in them. There is a wonderful sentence in Augustine ... 'Do not despair one of the thieves was saved do not presume one of the thieves was damned.' That sentence had a wonderful shape. It is the shape that matters.

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

Birth was the death of him.

Words are all we have.

Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it's awful.

Dublin university contains the cream of Ireland: Rich and thick.

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.

I shall state silences more competently than ever a better man spangled the butterflies of vertigo.

There's man all over for you, blaming on his boots the fault of his feet.

What do I know of man's destiny? I could tell you more about radishes.

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

Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world.

Let me go to hell, that's all I ask, and go on cursing them there, and them look down and hear me, that might take some of the shine off their bliss.

If I had the use of my body, I would throw it out the window.

We are all born mad. Some remain so.

Just under the surface I shall be, all together at first, then separate and drift, through all the earth and perhaps in the end through a cliff into the sea, something of me. A ton of worms in an acre, that is a wonderful thought, a ton of worms, I believe it.

I missed you...and at the same time I was happy. Isn't that a queer thing

Poets are the sense, philosophers the intelligence of humanity.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.

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

Nothing matters but the writing. There has been nothing else worthwhile... a stain upon the silence.

To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.

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

Go on failing. Go on. Only next time, try to fail better.

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.

Make sense who may. I switch off.

James Joyce was a synthesizer, trying to bring in as much as he could. I am an analyzer, trying to leave out as much as I can.

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

Where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on.

My characters have nothing. I'm working with impotence, ignorance... that whole zone of being that has always been set aside by artists as something unusable - something by definition incompatible with art.

Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

He cant think without his hat.

Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards.

Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.

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

I write about myself with the same pencil and in the same exercise book as about him. It is no longer I, but another whose life is just beginning.

Habit is a great deadener.

In the landscape of extinction, precision is next to godliness.

How can one better magnify the Almighty than by sniggering with him at his little jokes, particularly the poorer ones.

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

We lose our hair, our teeth Our bloom, our ideals.

That's how it is on this bitch of an earth.