Samuel Beckett quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Samuel Beckett on Wise Famous Quotes.

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

Oh it is not without scathe that one is gentle, courteous, reasonable, patient, day after day, year after year.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm in my right mind. Then it passes off and I'm as intelligent as ever.

I did not want to write, but I had to resign myself to it in the end.

VLADIMIR: Well? Shall we go?
ESTRAGON: Yes, let's go.

They do not move.

Estragon: we lost our rights?
vladimir: we got rid of them.

Birth was the death of me

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.

All roads were right for me, a wrong road was an event, for me.

So it is with time, that lightens what is dark, that darkens what is light.

At last I began to think, that is to say to listen harder.

Love requited is a short circuit.

I am such a good man, at bottom, such a good man, how is it that nobody ever noticed it?

We are all born crazy. Some remain that way.

From the meanest creature one departs wiser, richer, more conscious of one's blessings.

Her mind was a press of formless questions, mingling and crumbling limply away.

Nothing to be done..

Nothing is more real than nothing.

Humbly to ask a favour of people who are on the point of knocking your brains out sometimes produces good results.

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

What counts is to be in the world, the posture is immaterial, so long as one is on earth. To breathe is all that is required.

When you are up to your neck in shit, all you can do is sing.

It's not me, it's not true, it's not me, I'm far.

Delicious instants, before one's eyes get used to the dark.

We go wherever the flesh creeps least, said Mercier. We dodge along, hugging the walls, wherever the shit lies least thick.

Against the charitable gesture there is no defence.

I gave up before birth.

That penny farthing hell you call your mind

He imagines that when I see him indefatigable I'll regret my decision. Such is his miserable scheme. As though I were short of slaves!

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

Estragon: I'm like that. Either I forget right away or I never forget.

The end of a life is always vivifying.

We were all born mad. Some remain so.

So one invents obscurities. Rhetoric.

The whisky bears a grudge against the decanter.

It was like looking for a needle in a haystack full of vipers.

Sloth is all passions the most powerful.

Pozzo: I don't seem to be able ... (long hesitation) to depart.
Estragon: Such is life.

The more people I meet the happier I become.

She began stroking my ankles. I considered kicking her in the cunt.

We should turn resolutely towards Nature.

I was limply poking about in the garbage saying probably, for at that age I must still have been capable of general ideas, This is life.

Estragon: They're too big
Vladimir: Perhaps you'll have socks some day

And Watt's need of semantic succour was at times so great that he would set to trying names on things, and on himself, almost as a woman hats.

Does it really matter which hand is employed to absterge the podex?

I thought much about myself. That is to say I often took a quick look at myself, closed my eyes, forgot, began again.

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

Fail better worse now.

Wherever nauseated time has dropped a nice fat turd you will find our patriots, sniffing it up on all fours, their faces on fire.

The blind have no notion of time. The things of time are hidden from them too.

My dear Tom,
Delighted to get your letter. Do write again. This life is terrible and I don't understand how it can be endured.

God knows I'm not intelligent otherwise I'd be dead

Vladimir, be reasonable, you haven't yet tried everything. And I resumed the struggle.

All hangs together, I am in chains.

ESTRAGON: I can't go on like this.
VLADIMIR: That's what you think.

When you're in the shit up to your neck, there's nothing left to do but sing.

What do we do now, now that we are happy?

Hamm: There's something dripping in my head. A heart, a heart in my head.

I smell you off him, she screamed, he stinks of bitch.

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

To restore silence is the role of objects.

Reality, whether approached imaginatively or empirically, remains a surface, hermetic.

Where would I go, if I could go, who would I be, if I could be, what would I say, if I had a voice, who says this, saying it's me?

Women are all the bloody sameyou can't love for five minutes without wanting it abolished in brats and house bloody wifery.

I stopped being half-witted and became sly whenever I took the trouble.

That desert of loneliness and recrimination that men call love.

CLOV:
Do you believe in the life to come?
HAMM:
Mine was always that.

Spend the years of learning squandering
Courage for the years of wandering
Through a world politely turning
From the loutishness of learning.

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

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

It was as though the Saposcats drew the strength to live from the prospect of their impotence.

The old endless chain of love, tolerance, indifference, aversion and disgust

All is tedious, in this relation that is forced upon me.

All mankind is us, whether we like it or not.

So to every man, soon or late, comes envy of the fly, with all the long joys of summer before it.

There are two moments worthwhile in writing, the one when you start and the other when you throw it in the waste-paper basket.

How time flies when one has fun!

Hold the old holding hand. Hold and be held. Plod on and never recede. Slowly with never a pause plod on and never recede.

There is no use indicting words, they are no shoddier than what they peddle.

God is a witness that cannot be sworn.

Let's go." "We can't." "Why not?" "We're waiting for Godot.

Estragon: And if he doesn't come?
Vladimir: (after a moment of bewilderment) We'll see when the time comes.

How hideous is the semicolon.

(Looking at the tree) Pity we haven't got a bit of rope.

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

Terrible mania, when something happens, to enquire what.

Oh not that I was ever even incompletely deaf.

The churn of stale words in the heart again
love love love thud of the old plunger
pestling the unalterable
whey of words

I try. I fail. I try again. I fail better.

What are we doing here, that is the question.

The day that you die will be like any other day ... only shorter.

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

What is more true than anything else? To swim is true and to sink is true. One cannot speak any more of being, one must speak onlyof the mess.

you don't feel a mouth on you, you don't feel your mouth any more, no need of a mouth, the words are everywhere, inside me, outside me...

I could not have gone through the awful wretched mess of life without having left a stain upon the silence.

Dear incomprehension, it's thanks to you I'll be myself, in the end.

If by Godot I meant God, I would have said God, and not Godot.

Old endgame lost of old, play and lose and have done with losing.

Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It's awful.

But I know what darkness is, it accumulates, thickens, then suddenly bursts and drowns everything.