Samuel Beckett famous quotes

If you do not love me I shall not be loved If I do not love you I shall not love.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Love #Love You

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Inspirational #Motivational #Encouraging

Nothing is more real than nothing.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Real

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

#Goes On #Ends

I tried to groan, Help! Help! But the tone that came out was that of polite conversation.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Tone #Helping #Conversation

Yes, there were times when I forgot not only who I was but that I was, forgot to be.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Time

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Alternatives #Sun #Beckett

The creation of the world did not take place once and for all time, but takes place every day.
-- Samuel Beckett

#World #Creation #All Time

All I say cancels out, I’ll have said nothing.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Said

He who has waited long enough, will wait forever. And there comes the hour when nothing more can happen and nobody more can come and all is ended but the waiting that knows itself in vain.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Long #Waiting #Forever

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

#Destiny #Men

To restore silence is the role of objects.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Silence #Roles #Silence Is

Memories are killing. So you must not think of certain things, of those that are dear to you, or rather you must think of them, for if you don’t there is the danger of finding them, in your mind, little by little.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Memories #Thinking #Mind

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.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Running #Flying #Calm

Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that… Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Laughing #Stories #World

I am still alive then. That may come in useful.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Alive #May #Stills

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

#Long #Horrible

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

#Men #Littles #Forgotten

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.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Solitude #Inability #Three

And what I have, what I am, is enough, was always enough for me, and as far as my dear little sweet little future is concerned I have no qualms, I have a good time coming.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Sweet #Littles #Good Times

God is a witness that cannot be sworn.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Witness

So all things limp together for the only possible.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Together

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.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Guarantees #Dull #Lightning

But what matter whether I was born or not, have lived or not, am dead or merely dying. I shall go on doing as I have always done, not knowing what it is I do, nor who I am, nor where I am, nor if I am.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Who I Am #Knowing #What Matters

All life long, the same questions, the same answers.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Long #Answers #Long Life

If you don't know where you are currently standing, you're dead.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Where You Are #Standing

For to know nothing is nothing, not to want to know anything likewise, but to be beyond knowing anything, to know you are beyond knowing anything, that is when peace enters in, to the soul of the incurious seeker.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Knowing #Soul #Want

It sometimes happens and will sometimes happen again that I forget who I am and strut before my eyes, like a stranger.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Eye #Who I Am #Ego

Normally I didn’t see a great deal. I didn’t hear a great deal either. I didn’t pay attention. Strictly speaking I wasn’t there. Strictly speaking I believe I’ve never been anywhere.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Believe #Attention #Pay

To him who has nothing it is forbidden not to relish filth.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Filth #Forbidden

With all this darkness round me I feel less alone.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Darkness #Feels

Birth was the death of him.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Death #Birth

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

#Time #Blind #Notion

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.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Able #Dread

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

#Tolerance #Aversion #Indifference

It's so nice to know where you're going, in the early stages. It almost rids you of the wish to go there.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Nice #Wish #Stage

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.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Dream #Order #Dust

For the only way one can speak of nothing is to speak of it as though it were something, just as the only way one can speak of God is to speak of him as though he were a man, which to be sure he was, in a sense, for a time, and as the only way one can speak of man, even our anthropologists have realized that, is to speak of him as though he were a termite.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Time #Men #Way

In my head there are several windows, that I do know, but perhaps it is always the same one, open variously on the parading universe.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Window #Universe

The fact is, it seems, that the most you can hope is to be a little less, in the end, the creature you were in the beginning, and the middle.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Littles #Facts #Ends

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

#World #Unhappiness #Grants

Do we mean love, when we say love?
-- Samuel Beckett

#Mean #Mean Love

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

#Never Forget #Forget

Finished, it's finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished. Grain upon grain, one by one, and one day, suddenly, there's a heap, a little heap, the impossible heap. I can't be punished any more. I'll go now to my kitchen, ten feet by ten feet by ten feet, and wait for him to whistle me. Nice dimensions, nice proportions, I'll lean on the table, and look at the wall, and wait for him to whistle me.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Wall #Nice #Feet

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

#Solitude #Proust #Humans

The search for the means to put an end to things, an end to speech, is what enables the discourse to continue.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Mean #Speech #Ends

The time-state of attainment eliminates so accurately the time-state of aspiration, that the actual seems the inevitable, and, all conscious intellectual effort to reconstitute the invisible and unthinkable as a reality being fruitless, we are incapable of appreciating our joy by comparing it with our sorrow.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Reality #Appreciate #Effort

She felt, as she felt so often with Murphy, spattered with words that went dead as soon as they sounded; each word obliterated, before it had time to make sense, by the word that came next; so that in the end she did not know what had been said. It was like difficult music heard for the first time.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Next #Firsts #Ends

I have always been amazed at my contemporaries’ lack of finesse, I whose soul writhed from morning to night, in the mere quest of itself.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Morning #Night #Soul

I marshalled the words and opened my mouth, thinking I would hear them. But all I heard was a kind of rattle, unintelligible even to me who knew what was intended.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Thinking #Mouths #Kind

The Unnamable,1954... How all becomes clear and simple when one opens an eye on the within, having of course previously exposed it to the without, in order to benefit by the contrast.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Eye #Simple #Order

The Tuesday scowls, the Wednesday growls, the Thursday curses, the Friday howls, the Saturday snores, the Sunday yawns, the Monday morns, the Monday morns. The whacks, the moans, the cracks, the groans, the welts, the squeaks, the belts, the shrieks, the pricks, the prayers, the kicks, the tears, the skelps, and the yelps.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Friday #Monday #Prayer

It's a lot to ask of one creature, it's a lot to ask, that he should first behave as if he were not, then as if he were, before being admitted to that peace where he neither is, nor is not, and where the language dies that permits of such expressions.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Expression #Firsts #Language

Deplorable mania, when something happens, to inquire what.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Mania #Things Happen

Already all confusion. Things and imaginings. As of always. Confusion amounting to nothing. Despite precautions. If only she could be pure figment. Unalloyed. This old so dying woman. So dead. In the madhouse of the skull and nowhere else. Where no more precautions to be taken. No precautions possible. Cooped up there with the rest. Hovel and stones. The lot. And the eye. How simple all then. If only all could be pure figment. Neither be nor been nor by any shift to be. Gently gently. On. Careful.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Taken #Eye #Simple

Not to want to say, not to know what you want to say, not to be able to say what you think you want to say, and never to stop saying, or hardly ever, that is the thing to keep in mind, even in the heat of composition.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Thinking #Mind #Able

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

#Darkness

It is useless not to seek, not to want, for when you cease to seek you start to find, and when you cease to want, then life begins to ram her fish and chips down your gullet until you puke, and then the puke down your gullet until you puke the puke, and then the puked puke until you begin to like it.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Useless #Want #Rams

I pause to record that I feel in extraordinary form. Delirium perhaps.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Records #Delirium #Form

But I was not made for the great light that devours, a dim lamp was all I had been given, and patience without end, to shine it on the empty shadows.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Light #Shining #Shadow

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

#Thanks #Ends #Dear

Any fool can turn a blind eye but who knows what the ostrich sees in the sand.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Eye #Ostriches #Fool

Poets are the sense, philosophers­­ the intelligence­­ of humanity.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Humanity #Philosopher #Poet

People are bloody ignorant apes.
-- Samuel Beckett

#People #Ignorant #Apes

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

#Artist #Tasks #Chaos

Habit is the ballast that chains the dog to his vomit.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Dog #Habit #Chains

Yes, there is no denying it, any longer, it is not you who are dead, but all the others. So you get up and go to your mother, who thinks she is alive. That's my impression. But now I shall have to get myself out of this ditch. How joyfully I would vanish here, sinking deeper and deeper under the rains.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Mother #Rain #Thinking

My keepers, why keepers, I'm in no danger of stirring an inch, ah I see, it's to make me think I'm a prisoner, frantic with corporeality, rearing to get out and away.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Thinking #Danger #Inches

Fail, fail again, fail better.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Beautiful #Failing

The short winter’s day was drawing to a close. It seems to me sometimes that these are the only days I have ever known, and especially that most charming moment of all, just before night wipes them out.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Winter #Night #Drawing

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

#Butterfly #Men #Silence

They never lynch children, babies, no matter what they do they are whitewashed in advance.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Baby #Children #Matter

If by Godot I had meant God I would have said God, and not Godot.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Godot #Said

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.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Death #Air #Dying

Yes, I dont know why, but I have never been disappointed, and I often was in the early days, without feeling at the same time, or a moment later, an undeniable relief.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Time #Feelings #Relief

Poets are the sense, philosophers the intelligence of humanity.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Humanity #Philosopher #Poet

Make sense who may. I switch off.
-- Samuel Beckett

#May #Make Sense

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.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Eye #Confusion #Chance

Success and failure on the public level never mattered much to me, in fact I feel more at home with the latter, having breathed deep of its vivifying air all my writing life up to the last couple of years.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Success #Couple #Home

My life, my life, now I speak of it as of something over, now as of a joke which still goes on, and it is neither, for at the same time it is over and it goes on, and is there any tense for that? Watch wound and buried by the watchmaker, before he died, whose ruined works will one day speak of God, to the worms.
-- Samuel Beckett

#One Day #Goes On #Watches

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

#Use

All this business of a labour to accomplish, before I can end, of words to say, a truth to recover, in order to say it, before I can end, of an imposed task, once known, long neglected, finally forgotten, to perform, before I can be done with speaking, done with listening, I invented it all, in the hope it would console me, help me to go on, allow me to think of myself as somewhere on a road, moving, between a beginning and an end, gaining ground, losing ground, getting lost, but somehow in the long run making headway.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Running #Moving #Thinking

Enough. Sudden enough. Sudden all far. No move and sudden all far. All least. Three pins. One pinhole. In dimmost dim. Vasts apart. At bounds of boundless void. Whence no farther. Best worse no farther. Nohow less. Nohow worse. Nohow naught. Nohow on.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Moving #Void #Three

And all these questions I ask myself. It is not in a spirit of curiosity. I cannot be silent. About myself I need know nothing. Here all is clear. No, all is not clear. But the discourse must go on. So one invents obscurities. Rhetoric.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Curiosity #Needs #Obscurity

We are all born crazy. Some remain that way.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Crazy #Way #Born

I don't know why I told this story. I could just as well have told another. Perhaps some other time I'll be able to tell another. Living souls, you will see how alike they are.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Soul #Able #Stories

We all are born mad. Some remain so.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Mad #Born

That's the mistake I made, one of the mistakes, to have wanted a story for myself, whereas life alone is enough.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Mistake #Stories #Enough

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, living.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Art #World #Crafts

The memory came faint and cold of the story I might have told, a story in the likeness of my life, I mean without the courage to end or the strength to go on.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Memories #Mean #Goes On

Words are the clothes thoughts wear.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Clothes

We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. But habit is a great deadener.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Air #Cry #Habit

Better hope deferred than none.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Motivational

To think, when one is no longer young, when one is not yet old, that one is no longer young, that one is not yet old, that is perhaps something.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Time #Thinking #Young

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

#Bored #Awful

What is that unforgettable line?
-- Samuel Beckett

#Lines #Unforgettable

Don't look for meaning in the words. Listen to the silences.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Silence #Looks

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. Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. Let us not speak well of it either. Let us not speak of it at all. It is true the population has increased.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Our Generation #Laughing #Tears

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

#Writing #Two #Waste

Unfathomable mind: now beacon, now sea.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Sea #Mind #Beacons