Playwright Quotes

Melancholy is the nurse of frenzy.

You may well ask me why...I took the time to write [books]. I can only reply that I do not know. There was no why about it. I had to: that was all.

It is the highest creatures who take the longest to mature, and are the most helpless during their immaturity.

So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

If ever thou shalt love,In the sweet pangs of it remember me;For such as I am all true lovers are,Unstaid and skittish in all motions elseSave in the constant image of the creatureThat is beloved.

Swift as shadow, short as any dream

Life is the art of being well deceived, and to succeed, it must be habitual and uninterrupted.

Even the lowliest, provided he is whole, can be happy, and in his own . way, perfect.

You are my true and honourable wife;As dear to me as the ruddy dropsThat visit my sad heart.

Life is too short to learn German

Weed your better judgments of all opinion that grows rank in them.

All hoods make not monks.

Stimulate the phagocytes.

Your lordship, though not clean past your youth, have yet some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltiness of time.

Lawyers have been known to wrest from reluctant juries triumphant verdicts of acquittal for their clients, even when those clients, as often happens, were clearly and unmistakably innocent.

A teacher who can arouse a feeling for one single good action, for one single good poem, accomplishes more than he who fills our memory with rows and rows of natural objects, classified with name and form.

And we went our separate ways without having understood each other. As in this world nobody understands the other easily.

He that has a house to put's head in has a good head-piece.

Such poverty as we have today in all our great cities degrades the poor, and infects with its degradation the whole neighborhood in which they live. And whatever can degrade a neighborhood can degrade a country and a continent and finally the whole civilized world, which is only a large neighborhood.

I hate everything that merely instructs me without augmenting or directly invigorating my activity.

Lend less than you owe.

A state of affairs which leads to daily vexation is not the right state.

I scorn you, scurvy companion.

Fall Greeks; fail fame; honour or go or stay; My major vow lies here, this I'll obey.

I'd like to see Paris before I die.

Say she rail; why, I'll tell her plain She sings as sweetly as a nightingale. Say that she frown; I'll say she looks as clear As morning roses newly wash'd with dew. Say she be mute and will not speak a word; Then I'll commend her volubility, and say she uttereth piercing eloquence.

Wanted: A dog that neither barks nor bites, eats broken glass and shits diamonds.

Age, I do abhor thee, youth, I do adore thee.

No one who lives in error is free.

Art made tongue-tied by authority.

Would you like to know the great drama of my life? It is that I have put my genius into my life...I have put only my talent into my works.

All professions are conspiracies against the laity.

How to please the public - that's the test, But nowadays I find I'm in a fix; I know they're not accustomed to the best, But they've all read so much they know the tricks. How can we give then something fresh and new That's serious, but entertaining too?

Reading brings us unknown friends

Honor, riches, marriage-blessingLong continuance, and increasing,Hourly joys be still upon you!

When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept: Ambition should be made of sterner stuff: Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man.

Love, whose month is ever May,Spied a blossom passing fair,Playing in the wanton air:Through the velvet leaves the wind,All unseen can passage find;That the lover, sick to death,Wish'd himself the heaven's breath.

rhetoric is will doing the work of imagination.

How wayward is this foolish love that, like a testy babe, will scratch the nurse and presently, all humble, kiss the rod.

Is it possible he should know what he is, and be that he is?

A sympathy in choice.

Go wisely and slowly. Those who rush stumble and fall.

The most foolish of all errors is for clever young men to believe that they forfeit their originality in recognizing a truth which has already been recognized by others.

The horn, the horn, the lusty horn Is not a thing to laugh to scorn.

Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.

All of Creation’s a farce. Man was born as a joke. In his head his reason is buffeted Like wind-blown smoke. Life is a game. Everyone ridicules everyone else. But he who has the last laugh Laughs longest.

Who never ate his bread in sorrow, Who never spent the darksome hours Weeping, and watching for the morrow,- He knows you not, ye heavenly Powers.

Civilization is not by means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt.

To know what you're going to draw, you have to begin drawing.

No community has ever yet passed beyond the initial phases in which its pugnacity and fanaticism enabled it to found a nation, and its cupidity to establish and develop a commercial civilization.

No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.

I do not approve of anything which tampers with natural ignorance

If man thinks about his physical or moral state he usually discovers that he is ill.

Your wisdom is consum'd in confidence. Do not go forth to-day.

We must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.

We pay a high price for intelligence. Wisdom hurts.

He's the kind of man who picks his friends - to pieces.

Let him smell his way to Dover!

A vi'let on the meadow grew, That no one saw, that no one knew, It was a modest flower. A shepherdess pass'd by that way-- Light footed, pretty and so gay; That way she came, Softly warbling forth her lay.

If some appalling disaster befalls, there's Always a way for the rich.