Samuel Beckett is one of the most renowned playwrights of the 20th century. His quotes are insightful and thought-provoking, and provide a unique perspective on life. In this blog post, I’ll be sharing some of my favorite Samuel Beckett quotes.
Samuel Beckett was born in Ireland in 1906. He was a playwright, novelist, and poet. He is considered to be one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. Beckett’s work is known for its minimalist style and its focus on the absurd. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969. Beckett passed away in 1989.
Beckett spent his childhood in Dublin and attended Trinity College. In 1928, Beckett moved to Paris, France, and began writing. Beckett is best known for his plays, such as “Waiting for Godot” and “Happy Days”, and his novels, such as “Molloy” and ” Malone Dies”. Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969.
Here are some of the best Samuel Beckett quotes to get you thinking.
41 Samuel Beckett Quotes
- “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
2. “I use the words you taught me. If they don’t mean anything any more, teach me others. Or let me be silent.”
3. “When a man in a forest thinks he is going forward in a straight line, in reality he is going in a circle, I did my best to go in a circle, hoping to go in a straight line.”
4. “Life is habit. Or rather life is a succession of habits.”
5. “It was long since I had longed for anything and the effect on me was horrible.”
6. “Poets are the sense, philosophers the intelligence of humanity.”
7. “We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. But habit is a great deadener.”
8. “Habit is a great deadener.”
9. “The old endless chain of love, tolerance, indifference, aversion and disgust.”
10. “Dance first. Think later. It’s the natural order.”
Thought-Provoking Samuel Beckett Quotes
11. “Dear incomprehension, it’s thanks to you I’ll be myself, in the end.”
12. “The only sin is the sin of being born”
13. “There’s man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet.”
14. “Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.”
15. “But I know what darkness is, it accumulates, thickens, then suddenly bursts and drowns everything.”
16. “The creation of the world did not take place once and for all time, but takes place every day.”
17. “No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found.”
18. “You’re on Earth. There’s no cure for that.”
19. “There is man in his entirety, blaming his shoe when his foot is guilty.”
20. “Nothing is more real than nothing.”
21. “It’s so nice to know where you’re going, in the early stages. It almost rids you of the wish to go there.”
22. “Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.”
23. “I’m like that. Either I forget right away or I never forget.”
24. “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.”
25. “When you’re in the shit up to your neck, there’s nothing left to do but sing.”
26. “Ever Tried. Ever Failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
27. “If you do not love me I shall not be loved. If I do not love you I shall not love.”
28. “Yes, in my life, since we must call it so, there were three things, the inability to speak, the inability to be silent, and solitude, that’s what I’ve had to make the best of.”
29. “Yes, there were times when I forgot not only who I was but that I was, forgot to be.”
30. “To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.”
31. “I’ve got my faults, but changing my tune isn’t one of them.”
32. “If there is one question I dread, to which I have never been able to invent a satisfactory reply, it is the question what am I doing.”
33. “Habit is a compromise effected between the individual and his environment, or between the individual and his own organic eccentricities, the guarantee of a dull inviolability, the lightning-conductor of his existence.”
34. “Silence, yes, but what silence! For it is all very fine to keep silence, but one has also to consider the kind of silence one keeps.”
35. “I love order. It’s my dream. A world where all would be silent and still, and each thing in its last place, under the last dust.”
36. “The search for the means to put an end to things, an end to speech, is what enables the discourse to continue.”
37. “How can one better magnify the Almighty than by sniggering with him at his little jokes, particularly the poorer ones?”
38. “Nothing matters but the writing. There has been nothing else worthwhile… a stain upon the silence.”
39. “What was God doing with himself before the creation?”
40. “Decidedly it will never have been given to me to finish anything, except perhaps breathing. One must not be greedy.”
41. “Words and images run riot in my head, pursuing, flying, clashing, merging, endlessly. But beyond this tumult there is a great calm, and a great indifference, never really to be troubled by anything again.”