"I had little talent for happiness."
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Quote collection
Samuel Beckett quotes (page 8 of 16)
319 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Friendship, according to Proust, is the negation of that irremediable solitude to which every human being is condemned."
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"How can one better magnify the Almighty than by sniggering with him at his little jokes, particularly the poorer ones?"
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"I have always been amazed at my contemporaries’ lack of finesse, I whose soul writhed from morning to night, in the mere quest of itself."
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"I marshalled the words and opened my mouth, thinking I would hear them. But all I heard was a kind of rattle, unintelligible even to me who knew what was intended."
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"If by Godot I had meant God I would have said God, and not Godot."
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"Finished, it's finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished. Grain upon grain, one by one, and one day, suddenly, there's a heap, a little heap, the impossible heap. I can't be punished any more. I'll go now to my kitchen, ten feet by ten feet by ten feet, and wait for him to whistle me. Nice dimensions, nice proportions, I'll lean on the table, and look at the wall, and wait for him to whistle me."
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"Better hope deferred than none."
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"I can't go on. I'll go on."
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"The confusion is not my invention. We cannot listen to a conversation for five minutes without being aware of the confusion. It is all around us and our only chance now is to let it in. The only chance of renovation is to open our eyes and see the mess. It is not a mess you can make sense of."
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"Personally of course I regret everything. Not a word, not a deed, not a thought, not a need, not a grief, not a joy, not a girl, not a boy, not a doubt, not a trust, not a scorn, not a lust, not a hope, not a fear, not a smile, not a tear, not a name, not a face, no time, no place...that I do not regret, exceedingly. An ordure, from beginning to end."
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"It's so nice to know where you're going, in the early stages. It almost rids you of the wish to go there."
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"Love, that is all I asked, a little love, daily, twice daily, fifty years of twice daily love like a Paris horse-butcher's regular, what normal woman wants affection?"
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"All poetry, as discriminated from the various paradigms of prosody, is prayer."
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"Hold the old holding hand. Hold and be held. Plod on and never recede. Slowly with never a pause plod on and never recede."
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"Make sense who may. I switch off."
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"God is a witness that cannot be sworn."
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"Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn't want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn't want them back."
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"No painting is more replete than Mondrian's."
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"Women are all the bloody sameyou can't love for five minutes without wanting it abolished in brats and house bloody wifery."
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