Inspirational Quotes by Samuel Beckett (Irish Novelist, Playwright)

Inspirational Quotations by Samuel Beckett (Irish Novelist, Playwright)

Samuel Barclay Beckett (1906–89) was an Irish playwright, novelist, and poet who wrote in both English and French. He was a permanent resident of France from the mid-1930s. He was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Beckett is best known for his three full-length plays, Waiting for Godot (1952,) Krapp’s Last Tape (1959,) and Play (1964.) These novels express Beckett’s bleak view of the stagnation and futility of suffering, paralysis, and endurance in the face of man’s inevitable death and oblivion.

Beckett’s work is associated with existentialism and the theater of the absurd—characterized by repetitive, inventive language, and a fixation on futility and meaninglessness. The literary effect is a remarkable series of challenges to the readers’ conception of the world and their capacity to accept the full implications of the mysteries of existence.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Samuel Beckett

Words are all we have.
—Samuel Beckett
Topics: Words

We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment. How many people can boast as much?
—Samuel Beckett
Topics: Punctuality

Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards, I take the air there willingly, perhaps more willingly than elsewhere, when take the air I must.
—Samuel Beckett
Topics: Dying, Death

How can one better magnify the Almighty than by sniggering with him at his little jokes, particularly the poorer ones.
—Samuel Beckett
Topics: God

What do I know of man’s destiny? I could tell you more about radishes.
—Samuel Beckett
Topics: Destiny

To think, when one is no longer young, when one is not yet old, that one is no longer young, that one is not yet old, that is perhaps something.
—Samuel Beckett
Topics: Aging, Age

Birth was the death of him.
—Samuel Beckett
Topics: Birth

We are all born crazy. Some remain that way.
—Samuel Beckett

Make sense who may. I switch off.
—Samuel Beckett
Topics: Despair

There’s man all over for you, blaming on his boots the fault of his feet.
—Samuel Beckett
Topics: Blame

Dance first. Think later. It’s the natural order.
—Samuel Beckett
Topics: Dance

The bastard! He doesn’t exist!
—Samuel Beckett
Topics: God

We lose our hair, our teeth! Our bloom, our ideals.
—Samuel Beckett
Topics: Age, Aging

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

I shall state silences more competently than ever a better man spangled the butterflies of vertigo.
—Samuel Beckett
Topics: Silence

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
Topics: Parenting, Parents

We are all born mad. Some remain so.
—Samuel Beckett
Topics: Insanity

Habit is a great deadener.
—Samuel Beckett
Topics: Habit, Habits

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
Topics: Death

Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful.
—Samuel Beckett

Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. Yes, yes, it’s the most comical thing in the world.
—Samuel Beckett
Topics: Sadness, Unhappiness

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
Topics: Cries, Crying

Probably nothing in the world arouses more false hopes than the first four hours of a diet.
—Samuel Beckett
Topics: Diet, Weight

I say me, knowing all the while it’s not me.
—Samuel Beckett
Topics: Self-Discovery

Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
—Samuel Beckett
Topics: Trying, Failure