Quotes by Samuel Beckett

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

— Samuel Beckett

Wisdom

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

— Samuel Beckett

Love

We are all born mad. Some remain so.

— Samuel Beckett

Wisdom

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

— Samuel Beckett

Wisdom

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

— Samuel Beckett

Wisdom

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.

— Samuel Beckett

Wisdom

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

— Samuel Beckett

Wisdom

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.

— Samuel Beckett

Life

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.

— Samuel Beckett

Wisdom

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

— Samuel Beckett

Wisdom

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

— Samuel Beckett

Wisdom

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.

— Samuel Beckett

Wisdom

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

— Samuel Beckett

Happiness

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

— Samuel Beckett

Wisdom

Poets are the sense, philosophers the intelligence of humanity.

— Samuel Beckett

Life

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.

— Samuel Beckett

Wisdom

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

— Samuel Beckett

Wisdom

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

— Samuel Beckett

Wisdom

Words are all we have.

— Samuel Beckett

Wisdom

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

— Samuel Beckett

Wisdom

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.

— Samuel Beckett

Life

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

— Samuel Beckett

Wisdom

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.

— Samuel Beckett

Wisdom

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

— Samuel Beckett

Wisdom