19th-century Playwright Quotes

Anton Chekhov

George Bernard Shaw

Henrik Ibsen

Honoré de Balzac

William Butler Yeats

August Strindberg

Nikolai Gogol

We shall not have succeeded in demolishing everything unless we demolish the ruins as well. But the only way I can see of doing that is to use them to put up a lot of fine, well-designed buildings.

You can pretend to be serious but you can't pretend to be witty.

Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.

Sholem Aleichem

Those whom we called brutes had their revenge when Darwin showed us that they were our cousins.

George Bernard Shaw

You're a grand old flag;
You're a high-flying flag.
And forever in peace may you wave.

George M. Cohan

Most critical fault-finding, when reduced to its essentials, simply amounts to reproach of the author because he is himself -- thinks, feels, sees, and creates, as himself, instead of seeing and creating in the way the critic would have done.

A woman is fascinated not by art but by the noise made by those in the field.

What makes equality such a difficult business is that we only want it with our superiors.

A place in thy memory, dearest,
Is all that I claim;
To pause and look back when thou hearest
The sound of my name.

It was the hour when gauze-winged insects are born that only live for a day.

Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany

"Shells with lip, or tooth, or bleeding gum,
Tell-tale shells, and shells that whisper 'Come',
Shells that stammer, blush, and yet are dumb – "
"O let me hear!"

Thomas Sturge Moore

We see God and the devil making fools of each other, and we nurture in ourselves the absolutely unshakable conviction that both of them are drunk.

If there is one beast in all the loathsome fauna of civilization I hate and despise it is a man of the world.

Henry Arthur Jones

Alas, I was wrong when I spoke those word: you are so skilled that you have been able to take even my fear away.

Pedro Muñoz Seca

Humanity has no force more powerful and victorious than science.

The spring in Boston is like being in love: bad days slip in among the good ones, and the whole world is at a standstill, then the sun shines, the tears dry up, and we forget that yesterday was stormy.

Louise Closser Hale

Everyone tends to remember the past with greater fervor as the present gains greater importance.

You must not allow yourself to be advised, cautioned, influenced, persuaded

Minnie Maddern Fiske

I know that back in the twenties everyone who saw it judged John Barrymore's Hamlet to be unforgettable. Great though it was, I found his Richard III even more impressive. Barrymore's sinister, half-mad hunchback became incandescent as he gleefully anticipated his conquest of the Lady Anne. The genius of the actor contrived a slight but inspired alteration of Shakespeare's: 'Was ever woman in this humour wooed? Was ever woman in this humour won?' The change to 'Never was woman in this manner wooed; never was woman in this manner won' heightened the deviltry in Richard's gloating.

Golf is like a love affair. If you don't take it seriously, it's no fun; if you do take it seriously, it breaks your heart.

Marquis: Put a duck on a lake in the midst of some swans, and you'll see he'll miss his pond and eventually return to it.
Montrichard: Longing to be back in the mud!

Artistic truth is for me literally the highest truth: art may seize the essence of persons and movements no less truly, and certainly far more vitally, than a scientific generalization unifies a chaos of phenomena. Time and Space are only the conditions through which spiritual facts struggle. Hence I have here and there permitted myself liberties with these categories.

Israel Zangwill

Now dig my grave
Beneath the bay willows' boughs
And with blackness cover it over again,
There for evermore
Go from my domain:
I wish to slumber in peace.

That's the penalty we have to pay for our acts of foolishness - someone else always suffers for them.

Summertime
And the livin' is easy,
Fish are jumpin',
And the cotton is high.
Oh, your daddy's rich,
And your ma is good lookin';
So hush, little baby,
Don' yo' cry.