quotes by Playwright Quotes

“Strong reasons make strong actions let us go If you say ay, the king will not say no.”

“Come, and take choice of all my library, And so beguile thy sorrow.”

“That is the injustice of a woman's lot. A woman has to bring up her children; and that means to restrain them, to deny them things they want, to set them tasks, to punish them when they do wrong, to do all the unpleasant things. And then the father, who has nothing to do but pet them and spoil them, comes in when all her work is done and steals their affection from her.”

“Along with success comes a reputation for wisdom.”

“Create yourself. Be yourself your poem.”

“Therefore another prologue must tell he is not a lion”

“What? do I love her, that I desire to hear her speak again, and feast upon her eyes”

“If you wish to understand what Revolution is, call it Progress; and if you wish to understand what Progress is, call it Tomorrow.”

“I've always taken men just as I found 'em, and thank heavens I've been able to find 'em.”

“The wealth that cannot be administered is a burden.”

“Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.”

“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.”

“Experience is by industry achieved, And perfected by the swift course of time.”

“Let me be dressed as I will, yet flies worms and flowers exceed me still.”

“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.”

“You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant;But yet you draw not iron, for my heartIs true as steel: leave you your power to draw,And I shall have no power to follow you.”

“Everyone has the right to run his own life- even if you're heading for a crash. What I'm against is blind flying.”

“He only has freedom who ideally loves freedom himself and is glad to extend it to others. He who cares to have slaves must chain himself to them. He who builds walls to create exclusion for others builds walls across his own freedom. He who distrusts freedom in others loses his moral right to it.”

“Deliverance is not for me in renunciation. I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight.”

“Biography lends to death a new terror.”

“Beware of entrance to a quarrel, but, being in, bear t that th' opposed may beware of thee.”

“Learn to differentiate between ignorance and stupidity.”

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

“She was a lovely blonde, with fine teeth. She had gold and pearls for her dowry; but her gold was on her head, and her pearls were in her mouth.”

“I have never admitted the right of an elderly author to alter the work of a young author, even when the young author happens to be his former self.”

“You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not?”

“He capers, he dances, he has eyes of youth, he writes verses, he speaks holiday, he smells April and May.”

“Fools are as like husbands as pilchards are to herrings, the husband's the bigger.”

“Humility, a sense of reverence before the sons of heaven - of all the prizes that a mortal man might win, these, I say, are wisest; these are best.”

“It is only the unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes.”

“Indeed, as any one who has ever worked among the poor knows only too well, the brotherhood of man is no mere poet's dream, it is a most depressing and humiliating reality.”

“Know thyself' was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, 'Be thyself' shall be written.”

“People say sometimes that Beauty is superficial. That may be so. But at least it is not so superficial as Thought is. To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.”

“Human society, the world, and the whole of mankind is to be found in the alphabet.”

“Take you me for a sponge?”

“Our laws make law impossible; our liberties destroy all freedom; our property is organized robbery; our morality an impudent hypocrisy; our wisdom is administered by inexperienced or mal-experienced dupes; our power wielded by cowards and weaklings; and our honour false in all its points. I am an enemy of the existing order for good reasons”

“when you came you cried and everybody smiled with joy; when you go smile and let the world cry for you.”

“I think life too complex a thing to be settled by these hard and fast rules.”

“Tis our fast intent To shake all cares and business from our age, Conferring them on younger strengths, while we Unburdened crawl toward death.”

“Everything in moderation, including moderation.”

“I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.”

“Thank me no thankings, nor proud me no prouds.”

“All truths are old, and all that we have to do is recognize and utter them anew.”

“Tread Lightly, she is near Under the snow, Speak gently, she can hear The daisies grow.”

“Haply a woman's voice may do some goodWhen articles too nicely urged be stood on.”

“It is quite beyond me how anyone can believe God speaks to us in books and stories. If the world does not directly reveal to us our relationship to it, if our hearts fail to tell us what we owe ourselves and others, we shall assuredly not learn it from books, which are at best designed but to give names to our errors.”

“If I refuse to allow my leg to be amputated, its mortification and my death may prove that I was wrong; but if I let the leg go, nobody can ever prove that it would not have mortified had I been obstinate. Operation is therefore the safe side for the surgeon as well as the lucrative side.”

“...and her mother had been a great beauty who cared only to go to parties and amuse herself with gay parties.”

“To be in hell is to drift; to be in heaven is to steer.”

“Alas! it is a fearful thingTo feel another's guilt!”