1. "A Chinaman of the T´ang dinasty - and, by which definition, a philosopher - dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security." From Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.
2. "Age is a high price to pay for maturity."
3. “A lesson in folly is worth two in wisedom.” rom Arcadia.
4. “All mystical experience is coincidence; and vice versa, of course.”
5. “Atheism is a crutch for those who can't bear the reality of God.”
6. “Carnal knowledge. It´s what lovers trust each other with. Knowledge of each other, not of the flesh, but through the flesh, knowledge of the self, the real him, the real her, ´in extremis´, the mask slipped from the face. Every other version of oneself is on offer to the public. We share our vivacity, grief, sulks, anger, joy… we hand it out to anybody who happens to be standing around, to friends and family with a momentary sense of indecency perhaps, to strangers without hesitation. Our lovers share us with the passing trade. But in pairs we insist that we give ourselves to each other. What selves? What´s left? What else is there that hasn´t been dealt out like a deck of cards? A sort of knowledge. Personal, final, uncompromised. Knowing, being known. I revere that. Having that is being rich, you can be generous about what´s shared – she walks, she talks, she laughs, she lends a sympathetic ear, she kicks off her shoes, and dances on the tables, she´s everybody and it don´t mean a thing, let them eat cake; knowledge is something else, the undealt card, and while it´s held it makes you free-and-easy and nice to know, and when it´s gone everything is pain. Every single thing. Every object that meets the eye, a pencil,a tangerine,a travel poster. As if the physical world has been wired up to pass a current back to the part of your brain, where imagination glows like a filament in a lobe no bigger than a torch bulb. Pain.” From The Real Thing.
7. “… don´t confuse progress with perfectibility. A great poet is always timely. A great philosopher is an urgent need.” From Arcadia.
8. “Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end? “ From Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.
9. ”I agree with everything you say, but I would attack to the death your right to say it.”
10. "I don't think I can be expected to take seriously any game which takes less than three days to reach its conclusion."
11. “I don´t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you´re dead.” From The Real Thing.
12. “If an idea's worth having once, it's worth having twice.”
13. “If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, the history of music would have been different. As would the history of aviation, of course.” From The Real Thing.
14. “If knowledge isn´t self-knowledge it isn´t doing much, mate. Is the universe expanding? Is it contracting? Is it standing on one leg and singing `When Father Painted the Parlour´? Leave me out. I can expand my universe without you. `She walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies, and all that´s best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes.´ There you are, he wrote it after coming home from a party.” From Arcadia.
15. ”If you took away everything in the world that had to be invented, there'd be nothing left except a lot of people getting rained on.”
16. “I love love. I love having a lover and being one. The insularity of passion. I love it. I love the way it blurs the distinction between everyone who isn´t one´s lover. Only two kinds of presence in the world. There´s you and there´s them. I love you so.” From The Real Thing.
17. “I make notes, of course, I order my thoughts, and finally, when all is ready, and I am `calm in my mind´…” From Arcadia.
18. "It is better of course to know useless things than to know nothing."
19. “It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting, and if you can walk around it it's a sculpture.”
20. “It is wanting to know that makes us matter.” From Arcadia.
21. "Life is a gamble at terrible odds, if it were a bet, you would not take it."
22. “Loving and being loved is unliterary. It´s happiness expressed in banality and lust.” From The Real Thing.~
23. "No commitments. Only bargains. The trouble is I don´t really believe it. I´d rather be an idiot. It´s a kind of idiocy I like. "I use you because you love me. I love you so use me. Be indulgent, negligent, preoccupied, premenstrual... your credit is infinite. I´m yours, I´m commited..." It´s no trick loving somebody at their "best". Love is loving them at their worst. Is that romantic? Well, good. Everything should be romantic. Love, work, music, literature, virginity, loss of virginity..." From The Real Thing.
24. "Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them."
25. "Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering."
26. “(…) Seven plays from Aeschylus, seven from Sophocles, nineteen from Euripedes, my lady! You should no more grieve for the rest than for a buckle lost from your first shoe, or for your lesson book which will be lost when you are old. We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew? I have no doubt that the improved steam-driven heat-engine which puts Mr. Noakes into an ecstasy that he and it and the modern age should all coincide, was described on papyrus. Steam and brass were not invented in Glasgow.” From Arcadia.
27. “Shut up and listen. This thing here, which looks like a wooden club, is actually several pieces of particular wood cunningly put together in a certain way so that the whole thing is sprung, like a dance floor. It´s for hitting cricket balls with. If you get it right, the cricket ball will travel two hundred yards in four seconds, and all you´ve done is give it a knock like knocking the top of a bottle of of stout, and it makes a noise like a trout taking a fly… (…) What we´re trying to do is write cricket bats, so that when we throw up and idea and give it a little knock, it might… travel… (…) Now, what we´ve got here is a lump of wood of roughly the same shape trying to be a cricket bat, and if you hit a ball with it, the ball will travel about ten feet and you will drop the bat and dance about shouting “Ouch!” with your hands stuck into your armpits. (…) This isn´t better because someone says it´s better, or because there´s a conspiracy by the MCC to keep cudgels out of Lords. It´s better because it´s better. You don´t believe me, so I suggest you go out to bat with this and see how you get on.” From The Real Thing.
28. "Since we cannot hope for order let us withdraw with style from the chaos."
29. "Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art."
30. "The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means."
31. “The hard part is getting to the top of page 1.”
32. "The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists."
33. “There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said---no. But somehow we missed it.”
34. “The truth is always a compound of two half-truths, and you never reach it, because there is always something more to say.”
35. “You can´t stick Byron´s head in your laptop!” From Arcadia.
36. “We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.”
37. "We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance to somewhere else." From Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.
38. “When we have found all the mysteries and lost all the meaning, we will be alone, on an empty shore.” From Arcadia.
39. “Words don´t deserve that kind of malarkey. They´re innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos.” From The Real Thing.
2. "Age is a high price to pay for maturity."
3. “A lesson in folly is worth two in wisedom.” rom Arcadia.
4. “All mystical experience is coincidence; and vice versa, of course.”
5. “Atheism is a crutch for those who can't bear the reality of God.”
6. “Carnal knowledge. It´s what lovers trust each other with. Knowledge of each other, not of the flesh, but through the flesh, knowledge of the self, the real him, the real her, ´in extremis´, the mask slipped from the face. Every other version of oneself is on offer to the public. We share our vivacity, grief, sulks, anger, joy… we hand it out to anybody who happens to be standing around, to friends and family with a momentary sense of indecency perhaps, to strangers without hesitation. Our lovers share us with the passing trade. But in pairs we insist that we give ourselves to each other. What selves? What´s left? What else is there that hasn´t been dealt out like a deck of cards? A sort of knowledge. Personal, final, uncompromised. Knowing, being known. I revere that. Having that is being rich, you can be generous about what´s shared – she walks, she talks, she laughs, she lends a sympathetic ear, she kicks off her shoes, and dances on the tables, she´s everybody and it don´t mean a thing, let them eat cake; knowledge is something else, the undealt card, and while it´s held it makes you free-and-easy and nice to know, and when it´s gone everything is pain. Every single thing. Every object that meets the eye, a pencil,a tangerine,a travel poster. As if the physical world has been wired up to pass a current back to the part of your brain, where imagination glows like a filament in a lobe no bigger than a torch bulb. Pain.” From The Real Thing.
7. “… don´t confuse progress with perfectibility. A great poet is always timely. A great philosopher is an urgent need.” From Arcadia.
8. “Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end? “ From Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.
9. ”I agree with everything you say, but I would attack to the death your right to say it.”
10. "I don't think I can be expected to take seriously any game which takes less than three days to reach its conclusion."
11. “I don´t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you´re dead.” From The Real Thing.
12. “If an idea's worth having once, it's worth having twice.”
13. “If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, the history of music would have been different. As would the history of aviation, of course.” From The Real Thing.
14. “If knowledge isn´t self-knowledge it isn´t doing much, mate. Is the universe expanding? Is it contracting? Is it standing on one leg and singing `When Father Painted the Parlour´? Leave me out. I can expand my universe without you. `She walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies, and all that´s best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes.´ There you are, he wrote it after coming home from a party.” From Arcadia.
15. ”If you took away everything in the world that had to be invented, there'd be nothing left except a lot of people getting rained on.”
16. “I love love. I love having a lover and being one. The insularity of passion. I love it. I love the way it blurs the distinction between everyone who isn´t one´s lover. Only two kinds of presence in the world. There´s you and there´s them. I love you so.” From The Real Thing.
17. “I make notes, of course, I order my thoughts, and finally, when all is ready, and I am `calm in my mind´…” From Arcadia.
18. "It is better of course to know useless things than to know nothing."
19. “It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting, and if you can walk around it it's a sculpture.”
20. “It is wanting to know that makes us matter.” From Arcadia.
21. "Life is a gamble at terrible odds, if it were a bet, you would not take it."
22. “Loving and being loved is unliterary. It´s happiness expressed in banality and lust.” From The Real Thing.~
23. "No commitments. Only bargains. The trouble is I don´t really believe it. I´d rather be an idiot. It´s a kind of idiocy I like. "I use you because you love me. I love you so use me. Be indulgent, negligent, preoccupied, premenstrual... your credit is infinite. I´m yours, I´m commited..." It´s no trick loving somebody at their "best". Love is loving them at their worst. Is that romantic? Well, good. Everything should be romantic. Love, work, music, literature, virginity, loss of virginity..." From The Real Thing.
24. "Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them."
25. "Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering."
26. “(…) Seven plays from Aeschylus, seven from Sophocles, nineteen from Euripedes, my lady! You should no more grieve for the rest than for a buckle lost from your first shoe, or for your lesson book which will be lost when you are old. We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew? I have no doubt that the improved steam-driven heat-engine which puts Mr. Noakes into an ecstasy that he and it and the modern age should all coincide, was described on papyrus. Steam and brass were not invented in Glasgow.” From Arcadia.
27. “Shut up and listen. This thing here, which looks like a wooden club, is actually several pieces of particular wood cunningly put together in a certain way so that the whole thing is sprung, like a dance floor. It´s for hitting cricket balls with. If you get it right, the cricket ball will travel two hundred yards in four seconds, and all you´ve done is give it a knock like knocking the top of a bottle of of stout, and it makes a noise like a trout taking a fly… (…) What we´re trying to do is write cricket bats, so that when we throw up and idea and give it a little knock, it might… travel… (…) Now, what we´ve got here is a lump of wood of roughly the same shape trying to be a cricket bat, and if you hit a ball with it, the ball will travel about ten feet and you will drop the bat and dance about shouting “Ouch!” with your hands stuck into your armpits. (…) This isn´t better because someone says it´s better, or because there´s a conspiracy by the MCC to keep cudgels out of Lords. It´s better because it´s better. You don´t believe me, so I suggest you go out to bat with this and see how you get on.” From The Real Thing.
28. "Since we cannot hope for order let us withdraw with style from the chaos."
29. "Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art."
30. "The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means."
31. “The hard part is getting to the top of page 1.”
32. "The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists."
33. “There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said---no. But somehow we missed it.”
34. “The truth is always a compound of two half-truths, and you never reach it, because there is always something more to say.”
35. “You can´t stick Byron´s head in your laptop!” From Arcadia.
36. “We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.”
37. "We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance to somewhere else." From Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.
38. “When we have found all the mysteries and lost all the meaning, we will be alone, on an empty shore.” From Arcadia.
39. “Words don´t deserve that kind of malarkey. They´re innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos.” From The Real Thing.
