"It was long since I had longed for anything and the effect on me was horrible."
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Quote collection
Samuel Beckett quotes (page 7 of 16)
319 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Habit is a great deadener."
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"I don't know why I told this story. I could just as well have told another. Perhaps some other time I'll be able to tell another. Living souls, you will see how alike they are."
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"Words are all we have."
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"Estragon: I'm like that. Either I forget right away or I never forget."
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"I asked her to look at me and after a few moments - (pause) - after a few moments she did, but the eyes just slits, because of the glare I bent over her to get them in the shadow and they opened. (Pause. Low) Let me in."
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"When the object is perceived as particular and unique and not merely the member of a family, when it appears independent of any general notion and detached from the sanity of a cause, isolated and inexplicable in the light of ignorance, then and only then may it be a source of enchantment."
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"Over, over, there is a soft place in my heart for all that is over, no, for the being over, words have been my only loves, not many."
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"Watt's concern, deep as it appeared, was not after all what the figure was, in reality, but with what the figure appeared to be, in reality."
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"And truly it little matters what I say, this or that or any other thing. Saying is inventing. Wrong, very rightly wrong. You invent nothing, you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum one day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is wept."
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"I, of whom I know nothing, I know my eyes are open, because of the tears that pour from them unceasingly."
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"Poets are the sense, philosophers the intelligence of humanity."
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"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.' You won't believe what you can accomplish by attempting the impossible with the courage to repeatedly fail better."
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"What do we do now, now that we are happy?"
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"That's the mistake I made, one of the mistakes, to have wanted a story for myself, whereas life alone is enough."
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"Abode where lost bodies roam each searching for its lost one."
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"Already all confusion. Things and imaginings. As of always. Confusion amounting to nothing. Despite precautions. If only she could be pure figment. Unalloyed. This old so dying woman. So dead. In the madhouse of the skull and nowhere else. Where no more precautions to be taken. No precautions possible. Cooped up there with the rest. Hovel and stones. The lot. And the eye. How simple all then. If only all could be pure figment. Neither be nor been nor by any shift to be. Gently gently. On. Careful."
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"The fact would seem to be, if in my situation one may speak of facts, not only that I shall have to speak of things of which I cannot speak, but also, which is even more interesting, but also that I, which is if possible even more interesting, that I shall have to, I forget, no matter. And at the same time I am obliged to speak. I shall never be silent. Never."
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"All has not been said and never will be."
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"I could not have gone through the awful wretched mess of life without having left a stain upon the silence."
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