Playwright Quotes

William Shakespeare

Miguel de Cervantes

Anton Chekhov

Bertolt Brecht

George Bernard Shaw

Henrik Ibsen

Terence

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

Sholem Aleichem

Misery's fine - as long as you know you can get out of it when you want to.

Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people.

Adrian Mitchell

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.

I am human: nothing human is alien to me.

In Latin: Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto.

In short, virtue cannot live where envy reigns, nor liberality subsist with niggardliness.

Miguel de Cervantes

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

George M. Cohan

Everyone chases after happiness, not noticing that happiness is at their heels.

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

He who talks much cannot always talk well.

Thou art the cause, and most accursed effect.

William Shakespeare

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

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.

There's only us, there's only this. Forget regret, or life is yours to miss. No other road, no other way. No day but today!

Jonathan Larson

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

George Bernard Shaw

He plants trees to benefit another generation.

Caecilius Statius

Preach the blessings of our deeply incorporated civilization by the mouths of our eight-inch guns.

William Dean Howells

Do not despair. Remember there is no triangle, however obtuse, but the circumference of some circle passes through its wretched vertices.

The duty of a scientist is not to distort the manifestations of natural phenomena in the light of some more or less popular idea. His duty is to explain facts.

Émile Cammaerts

We are not masters of our own affections; our inclinations dailyalter: now we love pleasure, and anon we shall dote on business. Human frailty will have it so, and who can help it?

George Etherege

It is better to wear rags in honesty than brocade in dishonor.

One can make one's life a complete misery, worrying about burglaries and shipwrecks, but ask anyone, anyone you know... earth-shattering disasters and fabulous inheritances all seems to take place exclusively in the newspapers.

Imagine, if you can, what the rest of the evening was like. How they crouched by the fire which blazed and leaped and made much of itself in the little grate. How they removed the covers of the dishes, and found rich, hot savory soup, which was a meal in itself, and sandwiches and toast and muffins enough for both of them.

Frances Hodgson Burnett

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.

Whilst we strive To live most free, we're caught in our own toils.