Top 321 Quotes & Sayings by Samuel Beckett

They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more.

Where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on.

If I had the use of my body, I would throw it out the window.

James Joyce was a synthesizer, trying to bring in as much as he could. I am an analyzer, trying to leave out as much as I can.

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

You're on earth. There's no cure for that.

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

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

Let me go to hell, that's all I ask, and go on cursing them there, and them look down and hear me, that might take some of the shine off their bliss.

Just under the surface I shall be, all together at first, then separate and drift, through all the earth and perhaps in the end through a cliff into the sea, something of me. A ton of worms in an acre, that is a wonderful thought, a ton of worms, I believe it.

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

All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.

Poets are the sense, philosophers the intelligence of humanity.

I write about myself with the same pencil and in the same exercise book as about him. It is no longer I, but another whose life is just beginning.

Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.

Nothing matters but the writing. There has been nothing else worthwhile... a stain upon the silence.

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

We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment. How many people can boast as much?

Do we mean love, when we say love?

Birth was the death of him.

The tears of the world are a constant quality. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.

We are all born mad. Some remain so.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.

No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found.

Words are all we have.

In the landscape of extinction, precision is next to godliness.

Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards.

It is right that he too should have his little chronicle, his memories, his reason, and be able to recognize the good in the bad, the bad in the worst, and so grow gently old down all the unchanging days, and die one day like any other day, only shorter.

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

Habit is a great deadener.

There's man all over for you, blaming on his boots the fault of his feet.

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

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

People are bloody ignorant apes.

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

We are all born crazy. Some remain that way.

Words are the clothes thoughts wear.

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

My mistakes are my life.

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

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.

Poets are the sense, philosophers­­ the intelligence­­ of humanity.

Nothing is more real than nothing.

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

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

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

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

Then I went back into the house and wrote, It is midnight. The rain is beating on the windows. It was not midnight. It was not raining.

All I want to do is sit on my ass and fart and think of Dante.

It was the only way to progress, to stop.

Personally of course I regret everything. Not a word, not a deed, not a thought, not a need, not a grief, not a joy, not a girl, not a boy, not a doubt, not a trust, not a scorn, not a lust, not a hope, not a fear, not a smile, not a tear, not a name, not a face, no time, no place...that I do not regret, exceedingly. An ordure, from beginning to end.

Dance first. Think later. It's the natural order.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.' You won't believe what you can accomplish by attempting the impossible with the courage to repeatedly fail better.

Perhaps that's what I feel, an outside and an inside and me in the middle, perhaps that's what I am, the thing that divides the world in two, on the one side the outside, on the other the inside, that can be as thin as foil, I'm neither one side nor the other, I'm in the middle, I'm the partition, I've two surfaces and no thickness, perhaps that's what I feel, myself vibrating, I'm the tympanum, on the one hand the mind, on the other the world, I don't belong to either.

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

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

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.

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

If I was dead, I wouldn't know I was dead. That's the only thing I have against death. I want to enjoy my death.

Habit is the ballast that chains the dog to his vomit.