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Samuel Beckett

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36 Quotes by Samuel Beckett

  1. 1.

    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.

    Samuel Beckett

  2. 2.

    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.

    Samuel Beckett

  3. 3.

    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.

    Samuel Beckett

  4. 4.

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

    Samuel Beckett

  5. 5.

    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.

    Samuel Beckett

  6. 6.

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

    Samuel Beckett

  7. 7.

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

    Samuel Beckett

  8. 8.

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

    Samuel Beckett

  9. 9.

    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.

    Samuel Beckett

  10. 10.

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

    Samuel Beckett

  11. 11.

    Birth was the death of him.

    Samuel Beckett

  12. 12.

    Poets are the sense, philosophers the intelligence of humanity.

    Samuel Beckett

  13. 13.

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

    Samuel Beckett

  14. 14.

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

    Samuel Beckett

  15. 15.

    Habit is a great deadener.

    Samuel Beckett

  16. 16.

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

    Samuel Beckett

  17. 17.

    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.

    Samuel Beckett

  18. 18.

    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.

    Samuel Beckett

  19. 19.

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

    Samuel Beckett

  20. 20.

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

    Samuel Beckett

  21. 21.

    We are all born mad. Some remain so.

    Samuel Beckett

  22. 22.

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

    Samuel Beckett

  23. 23.

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

    Samuel Beckett

  24. 24.

    Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

    Samuel Beckett

  25. 25.

    Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards.

    Samuel Beckett

  26. 26.

    Words are all we have.

    Samuel Beckett

  27. 27.

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

    Samuel Beckett

  28. 28.

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

    Samuel Beckett

  29. 29.

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

    Samuel Beckett

  30. 30.

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

    Samuel Beckett

  31. 31.

    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.

    Samuel Beckett

  32. 32.

    I can’t go on. I’ll go on.

    Samuel Beckett

  33. 33.

    Do we mean love, when we say love?

    Samuel Beckett

  34. 34.

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

    Samuel Beckett

  35. 35.

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

    Samuel Beckett

  36. 36.

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

    Samuel Beckett