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
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
George Bernard Shaw Irish Playwright
William Butler Yeats Irish Poet
Norman Mailer American Novelist, Journalist
Oscar Wilde Irish Poet, Playwright
James Joyce Irish Novelist
Marguerite Duras French Novelist, Playwright
Gabriel Garcia Marquez Colombian Novelist, Short-Story Writer
George William Russell Irish Author
Sheridan Le Fanu Irish Novelist
Brendan Behan Irish Poet