Samuel Beckett Quotes

So I offer you only my deeply affectionate and compassionate thoughts and wish for you only that the strange thing may never fail you, whatever it is, that gives us the strength to live on and on with our wounds.

Birth was the death of him.

As it is with the love of the body, so with the friendship of the mind, the full is only reached by admittance to the most retired places.

So to every man, soon or late, comes envy of the fly, with all the long joys of summer before it.

La fin est dans le commencement et cependant on continue.

This tired abstract anger; inarticulate passive opposition; always the same thing in dublin

E: Well, shall we go?
V: Yes, let's go.
(They do not move)

In order to be company he must display a certain mental activity. But it need not be of a high order. Indeed it might be argued the lower the better. Up to a point. The lower the order of mental activity the better the company. Up to a point.

all I hear leave out more leave out all hear no more lie there in my arms the ancient without end me we're talking of me without end that buries all mankind to the last cunt they'd be good moments in the dark the mud hearing nothing saying nothing capable of nothing nothing

And yet sometimes it seems to me I am there, among the incriminated scenes, tottering under the attributes peculiar to the lords of creation ... Yes, more than once I almost took myself for the other, all but suffered after his fashion, the space of an instant.

You think you are simply resting, the better to act when the time comes, or for no reason, and you soon find yourself powerless ever to do anything again.

L'humanité ... est un puits à deux seaux. Pendant que l'un descend pour être rempli, l'autre monte pour être vidé.

Nowhere in particular on the way from A to Z. Or say for verisimilitude the Balloygan Road. That dear old back road. Somewhere on the Ballyogan Road in lieu of nowhere in particular. Where no truck anymore. Somewhere on the Ballyogan Road on the way from A to Z.

Hamm: And the horizon? Nothing on the horizon?
Clov: (Lowering the telescope, turning towards Hamm, exasperated): What in God's name would there be on the horizon? (Pause.)
Hamm: The waves, how are the waves?
Clov: The waves? (He turns the telescope on the waves.) Lead.
Hamm: And the sun?
Clove: (Looking) Zero.
Hamm: But it should be sinking. Look again.
Clov: (Looking) Damn the sun.
Hamm: Is it night already then?
Clov: (Looking) No.
Hamm: Then what is it?
Clov: (Looking) Gray. (Lowering the telescope, turning towards Hamm, louder.) Gray! (Pause, still louder.) GRRAY!

Ah if only this voice could stop, this meaningless voice which prevents you from being nothing, just barely prevents you from being nothing and nowhere, just enough to keep alight this little yellow flame feebly darting from side to side, panting, as if straining to tear itself from its wick, it should never have been lit, or it should never have been fed, or it should have been put out, put out, it should have been let go out.