Samuel Beckett Quotes

You're on Earth. There's no cure for that.

~ Samuel Beckett

The end is in the beginning and yet you go on.

~ Samuel Beckett

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

~ Samuel Beckett

The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.

~ Samuel Beckett

Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

~ Samuel Beckett

I can't go on, I'll go on.

~ Samuel Beckett

I always thought old age would be a writer’s best chance. Whenever I read the late work of Goethe or W. B. Yeats I had the impertinence to identify with it. Now, my memory’s gone, all the old fluency’s disappeared. I don’t write a single sentence without saying to myself, ‘It’s a lie!’ So I know I was right. It’s the best chance I’ve ever had.

~ Samuel Beckett

Words are the clothes thoughts wear.

~ Samuel Beckett

You must go on.I can’t go on.I’ll go on.

~ Samuel Beckett

It is suicide to be abroad. But what it is to be at home, ... what it is to be at home? A lingering dissolution.

~ Samuel Beckett

In the name of Bacon will you chicken me up that egg.Shall I swallow cave-phantoms?

~ Samuel Beckett

The more people I meet the happier I become.

~ Samuel Beckett

I must be happy, he said, it is less pleasant than I should have thought.

~ Samuel Beckett

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

~ Samuel Beckett

Yes, there is no good pretending, it is hard to leave everything.

~ Samuel Beckett

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

~ Samuel Beckett

Ah earth you old extinguisher.

~ Samuel Beckett

I shall soon be quite dead at last in spite of all.

~ Samuel Beckett

One day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second.

~ Samuel Beckett

And yet sometimes it seems to me I am there, among the incriminated scenes, tottering under the attributes peculiar to the lords of creation ... Yes, more than once I almost took myself for the other, all but suffered after his fashion, the space of an instant.

~ Samuel Beckett

[Y]ou cannot mention everything in its proper place, you must choose, between the things not worth mentioning and those and those even less so.

~ Samuel Beckett

Spend the years of learning squanderingCourage for the years of wanderingThrough a world politely turningFrom the loutishness of learning.

~ Samuel Beckett

Ever Tried. Ever Failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

~ Samuel Beckett

You can't have everything, I've often noticed it.

~ Samuel Beckett

It was long since I had longed for anything and the effect on me was horrible.

~ Samuel Beckett

Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.

~ Samuel Beckett

POZZO:I am blind.(Silence.)ESTRAGON:Perhaps he can see into the future.

~ Samuel Beckett

The forms are many in which the unchanging seeks relief from its formlessness.

~ Samuel Beckett

To every man his little cross. Till he dies. And is forgotten.

~ Samuel Beckett

ESTRAGON: Don't touch me! Don't question me! Don't speak to me! Stay with me!VLADIMIR: Did I ever leave you?ESTRAGON: You let me go.

~ Samuel Beckett

As it is with the love of the body, so with the friendship of the mind, the full is only reached by admittance to the most retired places.

~ Samuel Beckett

Friendship, according to Proust, is the negation of that irremediable solitude to which every human being is condemned.

~ Samuel Beckett

What is certain is this, that I never rested in that way again, my feet obscenely resting on the earth, my arms on the handlebars and on my arms my head, rocking and abandoned. It is indeed a delporable sight, a deplorable example, for the people, who so need to be encouraged, in their bitter toil, and to have before their eyes manifestations of strength only, of courage and joy, without which they might collapse, at the end of the day, and roll on the ground.

~ Samuel Beckett

To have been always what I am - and so changed from what I was.

~ Samuel Beckett

To be always what I am - and so changed from what I was.

~ Samuel Beckett

For in me there have always been two fools, among others, one asking nothing better than to stay where he is and the other imagining that life might be slightly less horrible a little further on. So that I was never disappointed, so to speak, whatever I did, in this domain. And these inseparable fools I indulged turn about, that they might understand their foolishness.

~ Samuel Beckett

Ada: And why life? (Pause.) Why life, Henry? (Pause.) Is there anyone about?Henry: Not a living soul.Ada: I thought as much. (Pause.) When we longed to have it to ourselves there was always someone. Now that it does not matter the place is deserted.

~ Samuel Beckett

You are on your back at the foot of an aspen. In its trembling shade. She at right angles propped on her elbows head between her hands. Your eyes opened and closed have looked in hers looking in yours. In your dark you look in them again. Still. You feel on your face the fringe of her long black hair stirring in the still air. Within the tent of hair your faces are hidden from view. She murmurs, Listen to the leaves. Eyes in each other's eyes you listen to the leaves. In their trembling shade.

~ Samuel Beckett

But even them, my pains, I understand ill. That must come from my not being all pain and nothing else. There's the rub. Then they recede, or I, till they fill me with amaze and wonder, seen from a better planet. Not often, but I ask no more. Catch-cony life! To be nothing but pain, how that would simplify matters! Omnidolent! Impious dream.

~ Samuel Beckett

Light heat all known all white heart breath no sound.

~ Samuel Beckett