Famous Samuel Beckett Quotations

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"Birth was the death of him."
by Samuel Beckett
"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."
by Samuel Beckett
"We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment. How many people can boast as much?"
by Samuel Beckett
"We are all born mad. Some remain so."
by Samuel Beckett
"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better."
by Samuel Beckett
"Fail, fail again, fail better."
by Samuel Beckett
"I have my faults, but changing my tune is not one of them."
by Samuel Beckett
"My characters have nothing. I'm working with impotence, ignorance... that whole zone of being that has always been set aside by artists as something unusable - something by definition incompatible with art."
by Samuel Beckett
"The major sin is the sin of being born."
by Samuel Beckett
"Vladimir: That passed the time.
Estragon: It would have passed in any case.
Vladimir: Yes, but not so rapidly."
by Samuel Beckett
"Vladimir That passed the time. Estragon It would have passed in any case. Vladimir Yes, but not so rapidly."
by Samuel Beckett
"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."
by Samuel Beckett
"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"
by Samuel Beckett
"Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it's awful."
by Samuel Beckett
"There's man all over for you, blaming on his boots the fault of his feet."
by Samuel Beckett
"To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now."
by Samuel Beckett
"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."
by Samuel Beckett
"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."
by Samuel Beckett
"Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards, I take the air there willingly, perhaps more willingly than elsewhere, when take the air I must."
by Samuel Beckett
"Make sense who may. I switch off."
by Samuel Beckett
"Probably nothing in the world arouses more false hopes Than the first four hours of a diet."
by Samuel Beckett
"Habit is a great deadener."
by Samuel Beckett
"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."
by Samuel Beckett
"The end is the beginning and yet you go on"
by Samuel Beckett,
"Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world."
by Samuel Beckett
"I shall state silences more competently than ever a better man spangled the butterflies of vertigo."
by Samuel Beckett
"'To my thinking' boomed the Professor, begging the question as usual, 'the greatest triumph of the human mind was the calculation of Neptune f..."
by Samuel Beckett
"[T]he syndrome known as life is too diffuse to admit of palliation. For every symptom that is eased, another is made worse. The horse leech's ..."
by Samuel Beckett
"All life long, the same questions, the same answers."
by Samuel Beckett
"An imaginative adventure does not enjoy the same corsets as reportage."
by Samuel Beckett
"Allusion has been made to [Proust's] contempt for the literature that 'describes,' for the realists and naturalists worshipping the offal of e..."
by Samuel Beckett
"Ah earth you old extinguisher."
by Samuel Beckett
"Art has always been this—pure interrogation, rhetorical question less the rhetoric—whatever else it may have been obliged by social realit..."
by Samuel Beckett
"As between these two, the need that in its haste to be abolished cannot pause to be stated and the need that is the absolute predicament of pa..."
by Samuel Beckett
"He brings light, as only the great dare to bring light, to the issueless predicament of existence."
by Samuel Beckett
"I am being given, if I may venture the expression, birth into death, such is my impression. The feet are clear already, of the great cunt of e..."
by Samuel Beckett
"I speak for an art ... weary of its puny exploits, weary of pretending to be able, of being able, of doing a little better the same old thing,..."
by Samuel Beckett
"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 clif..."
by Samuel Beckett
"I've tried not to exaggerate the glory of athletes. I'd rather, if I could, preserve a sense of proportion, to write about them as excellent b..."
by Samuel Beckett
"live the space of a door that opens and shuts"
by Samuel Beckett
"Never but the one matter. The dead and gone. The dying and going. From the word go."
by Samuel Beckett
"No painting is more replete than Mondrian's."
by Samuel Beckett
"No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found."
by Samuel Beckett
"Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards, I take the air there willingly, perhaps more willingly than elsewhere, when take the air I ..."
by Samuel Beckett
"The chartered recountants take the thing to pieces and put it together again. They enjoy it. The artist takes it to pieces and makes a new thi..."
by Samuel Beckett
"The end of a life is always vivifying."
by Samuel Beckett
"The freedom of indifference, the indifference of freedom, the will dust in the dust of its object, the act a handful of sand let fall—these ..."
by Samuel Beckett
"The time is perhaps not altogether too green for the vile suggestion that art has nothing to do with clarity, does not dabble in the clear and..."
by Samuel Beckett
"The trouble with her was she had never been really born!"
by Samuel Beckett
"The situation is that of him who is helpless, cannot act, in the event cannot paint, since he is obliged to paint. The act is of him who, help..."
by Samuel Beckett
"There I sat, in the biting wind, wishing she were gone."
by Samuel Beckett
"There is at least this to be said for mind, that it can dispel mind."
by Samuel Beckett
"They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more."
by Samuel Beckett
"To be an artist is to fail, as no other dare fail, that failure is his world and the shrink from desertion, art and craft, good housekeeping, ..."
by Samuel Beckett
"What are we doing here, that is the question."
by Samuel Beckett
"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..."
by Samuel Beckett
"You know what she died of, Mother Pegg? Of darkness."
by Samuel Beckett


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