Quotes By Samuel Beckett

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

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

I have my faults, but changing my tune is not one of them.

Birth was the death of him.

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.

James Joyce was a synthesizer, trying to bring in as much as he could. I am an analyzer, trying to leave out as much as I can.

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.

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

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

If I had the use of my body, I would throw it out the window.

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.

We are all born mad. Some remain so.

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

Poets are the sense, philosophers the intelligence of humanity.

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.

Dublin university contains the cream of Ireland: Rich and thick.

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

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

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

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

Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

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

Habit is a great deadener.

Go on failing. Go on. Only next time, try to fail better.

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.

I shall state silences more competently than ever a better man spangled the butterflies of vertigo.

Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards.

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

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

Words are all we have.