Samuel Beckett Quotes

Vladimir: I don't understand. Estragon: Use your intelligence, can't you? Vladimir uses his intelligence. Vladimir: (finally) I remain in the dark.

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

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.

Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

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

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

The more people I meet the happier I become.

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

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

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

The only sin is the sin of being born

Ah earth you old extinguisher.

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

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

drill one hole after another into [language] until that which lurks behind, be it something or nothing, starts seeping through – I cannot imagine a higher goal for today’s writer.

[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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Light heat all known all white heart breath no sound.

Unfathomable mind: now beacon, now sea.

Incontinent the void. The zenith. Evening again. When not night it will be evening. Death again of deathless day. On one hand embers. On the other ashes. Day without end won and lost. Unseen.

Estragon: You see, you feel worse when I'm with you. I feel better alone, too.Vladmir: Then why do you always come crawling back?Estragon: I don't know.

But he had turned, little by little, a disturbance into words, he had made a pillow of old words, for his head.

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.

Memory and Habit are attributes of the Time cancer. They control the most simple Proustian episode, and an understanding of their mechanism must precede any particular analysis of their application.

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

All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.—Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho (1983)

Dying for dark - the darker the worse. Strange.

they comedifferent and the samewith each it is different and the samewith each the absence of love is differentwith each the absence of love is the same

Have you shat, my child, I said gently.

He sometimes halted without saying anything. Either he had finally nothing to say or while having something to say he finally decided not to say it.

In reality I said nothing at all, but I heard a murmur, something gone wrong with the silence, and I pricked up my ears, like an animal I imagine, which gives a start and pretends to be dead.

Boys my age with whom, in spite of everything, I was obliged to mix occasionally, mocked me.

In an instant all will vanish and we'll be alone once more, in the midst of nothingness.

Nor did he think of Celia any more, though he could sometimes remember having dreamt of her. If only he had been able to think of her, he would not have needed to dream of her.

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

And on the threshold of being no more I succeed in being another.

VLADIMIR: Moron!ESTRAGON: Vermin!VLADIMIR: Abortion!ESTRAGON: Morpion!VLADIMIR: Sewer-rat!ESTRAGON: Curate!VLADIMIR: C

...The less I think of it the more certain I am.

Curiosity is the hair of our habit tending to stand on end. It rarely happens that our attention is not stained in greater or lesser degree by this animal element.

Seen no matter how and said as seen. Dread of black. Of white. Of void. Let her vanish. And the rest. For good.

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

HAMM:Scoundrel! Why did you engender me?NAGG:I didn't know.HAMM:What? What didn't you know?NAGG:That it'd be you.(Pause.)

I was out of sorts. They are deep, my sorts, a deep ditch, and I am not often out of them.