Top 802 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Dramatists - Page 9

Nothing can atone for the lack of modesty; without which beauty is ungraceful and wit detestable.

Every time you hear a bell ring, it means that some angel's just got his wings.

If you steal from one author it's plagiarism; if you steal from many it's research.

Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.

Time: all things consume it, love alone makes use of it.

It has been said that absolute power corrupts absolutely, but many it not be truer to say that to be absolutely powerful a man must first corrupt himself?

It is a profound mistake to think that every thing has been discovered; as well think the horizon the boundary of the world.

Liars are always most disposed to swear.

To remember everything is a form of madness.

Gentlemen, in the little moment that remains to us between the crisis and the catastrophe, we may as well drink a glass of Champagne.

There aren't enough secrets to go round anymore. Some spies are having to invent secrets in order to earn a living.

Economy is a way of spending money without getting any pleasure out of it.

The trident of Neptune is the sceptre of the world.

Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss.

Ay, rail at gaming - 'tis a rich topic, and affords noble declamation. Go, preach against it in the city - you'll find a congregation in every tavern.

If we must part for ever, Give me but one kind word to think upon, And please myself withal, whilst my heart's breaking!

The honour is overpaid,When he that did the act is commentator.

We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.

Gossip is more popular than literature.

Only the actions of the just, Smell sweet and blossom in their dust.

He that has been bitten by a snake is afraid of a rope.

True dignity is never gained by place, and never lost when honors are withdrawn.

Cut off from his religious, metaphysical and transcendental roots, man is lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless.

When I invite a woman to dinner, I expect her to look at my face. That's the price she has to pay.

A play is fiction - and fiction is fact distilled into truth.

The only consolation I can find in your immediate presence is your ultimate absence.

No praying, it spoils business.

Born in a cellar... and living in a garret.

I have heard people say that they drink to forget their sorrows but the more I drink the more sorrows I collect

Life is a game - sometimes serious, sometimes fun - but a game that must be played with true team spirit.

The fool inherits, but the wise must get.

I always feel over-appreciated but underestimated.

You have to assert something about yourself in order to be yourself.

Knaves will thrive when honest plainness knows not how to live.

We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.

Once in my childhood I had been eager to learn Irish; I thought to get leave to take lessons from an old Scripture-reader who spent a part of his time in the parish of Killinane, teaching such scholars as he could find to read their own language in the hope that they might turn to the only book then being printed in Irish, the Bible.

On the throne, one has many worries; and remorse is the one that weighs the least.

That, let us rail at women, scorn and flout 'em, We may live with, but cannot live without 'em.

The madman who knows that he is mad is close to sanity.

My films are about embarrassment.

When men make gods, there is no God!

When love grows diseased, the best thing we can do is to put it to a violent death; I cannot endure the torture of a lingering and consumptive passion.

Love's like the measles - all the worse when it comes late in life.

Who's a prince or beggar in the grave?

Women have the genius of charity. A man gives but his gold; a woman adds to it her sympathy.

Is it not passing brave to be a King and ride in triumph through Persepolis?

Money will never make you happy and happy will never make you money. That may be a wise crack, but I doubt it.

To profit from good advice requires more wisdom than to give it.

Children can write poetry and then, unless they're poets, they stop when reach puberty.

You can only predict things after they have happened.

There is no such test of a man's superiority of character as in the well-conducting of an unavoidable quarrel.

There is no armor against fate.

I love Stewart Lee's 'Comedy Vehicle' on BBC2. The guy is a genius.

Many a happiness in life, as many a disaster, can be due to chance, but the peace within us can never be governed by chance.

Joy is a subtle elf; I think one's happiest when he forgets himself.

When man tries to imagine Paradise on earth, the immediate result is a very respectable Hell.

Necessity, the mother of invention.

Too much virtue can be criminal.

We possess only the happiness we are able to understand.

Religion's in the heart, not in the knees.