Eugene O'Neill Quotes

Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The Grace of God is glue.

God gave us mouths that close and ears that don't... that should tell us something.

We are where centuries only count as seconds, and after a thousand lives, our eyes begin to open.

There is no present or future-only the past, happening over and over again-now.

We need above all to learn again to believe in the possibility of nobility of spirit in ourselves.

Life is for each man a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.

We fought so long against small things that we became small ourselves.

Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.

I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room - and God damn it - died in a hotel room.

I will be an artist or nothing!

The only living life is in the past and future - the present is an interlude - strange interlude in which we call on past and future to bear witness that we are living.

The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober.

Writing is my vacation from living.

One should be either sad or joyful. Contentment is a warm sty for eaters and sleepers.

A game of secret, cunning stratagems, in which only the fools who are fated to lose reveal their true aims or motives - even to themselves.

Man's loneliness is but his fear of life.

The sea hates a coward.

It's a great game - the pursuit of happiness.

Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will. But be drunken.

While you are still beautiful and life still woos, it is such a fine gesture of disdainful pride to jilt it.

Take some wood and canvas and nails and things. Build yourself a theater, a stage, light it, learn about it. When you've done that you will probably know how to write a play.

Dalmatians are not only superior to other dogs, they are like all dogs, infinitely less stupid than men.

Obsessed by a fairy tale, we spend our lives searching for a magic door and a lost kingdom of peace.

When men make gods, there is no God!

Life is perhaps best regarded as a bad dream between two awakenings.

You said they had found the secret of happiness because they had never heard that love can be a sin.

Those who succeed and do not push on to greater failure are the spiritual middle-classers.

The child was diseased at birth, stricken with a hereditary ill that only the most vital men are able to shake off. I mean poverty-the most deadly and prevalent of all diseases.

Everything looked and sounded unreal. Nothing was what it is. That's what I wanted - to be alone with myself in another world where truth is untrue and life can hide from itself.

What beastly incidents our memories insist on cherishing, the ugly, and the disgusting; the beautiful things we have to keep diaries to remember.

I am so far from being a pessimist...on the contrary, in spite of my scars, I am tickled to death at life.

When I was a kid I used to get fun out of my horrors.

Critics? I love every bone in their heads.

No dog is as well bred or as well mannered or as distinguished and handsome.

The past is the present, isn’t it? It’s the future too.

Life is a long drawn out lie, with a sniffling sigh at the end of it.

Happiness hates the timid. So does science.

Dey's some things I don't got to be told. I kin read them in folks' eyes.

Our lives are merely strange dark interludes in the electric display of God the Father.

It is Mystery - the mystery any one man or woman can feel but not understand as the meaning of any event - or accident - in any life on earth.

We are such things as rubbish is made of, so let's drink up and forget it.

One may not give one's soul to a devil of hate - and remain forever scatheless.

What's the use coming home to get the blues over what can't be helped.

I hate doctors! They'll do anything... to keep you coming to them. They'll sell their souls. What's worse, they'll sell yours, and you never know it till one day you find yourself in hell.

Irish as a Paddy's pig.

The devil! what beastly things our memories insist on cherishing!

You're worse than decent. You're virtuous.

You can't be too careful about work. It's the most dangerous habit known to medical science.

If dat ghost have money, I tells him never to haunt you less'n he wants to lose it!

The Mad Scene. Enter Ophelia!