Samuel Beckett Quotes

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.

There's never an end for the sea.

Don't look for meaning in the words. Listen to the silences.

The creation of the world did not take place once and for all time, but takes place every day.

If you do not love me I shall not be loved If I do not love you I shall not love.

If you don't know where you are currently standing, you're dead.

Nothing is more real than nothing.

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

I tried to groan, Help! Help! But the tone that came out was that of polite conversation.

Dear incomprehension, it's thanks to you I'll be myself, in the end.

Perhaps that's what I feel, an outside and an inside and me in the middle, perhaps that's what I am, the thing that divides the world in two, on the one side the outside, on the other the inside, that can be as thin as foil, I'm neither one side nor the other, I'm in the middle, I'm the partition, I've two surfaces and no thickness, perhaps that's what I feel, myself vibrating, I'm the tympanum, on the one hand the mind, on the other the world, I don't belong to either.

Memories are killing. So you must not think of certain things, of those that are dear to you, or rather you must think of them, for if you don’t there is the danger of finding them, in your mind, little by little.

That's what hell must be like, small chat to the babbling of Lethe about the good old days when we wished we were dead.

Dance first. Think later. It's the natural order.

How time flies when one has fun!

The end is in the beginning and yet you go on.

If there is one question I dread, to which I have never been able to invent a satisfactory reply, it is the question what am I doing.

All life long, the same questions, the same answers.

We wait. We are bored. (He throws up his hand.) No, don't protest, we are bored to death, there's no denying it. Good. A diversion comes along and what do we do? We let it go to waste. Come, let's get to work! (He advances towards the heap, stops in his stride.) In an instant all will vanish and we'll be alone more, in the midst of nothingness!

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.

Any fool can turn a blind eye but who knows what the ostrich sees in the sand.

It is useless not to seek, not to want, for when you cease to seek you start to find, and when you cease to want, then life begins to ram her fish and chips down your gullet until you puke, and then the puke down your gullet until you puke the puke, and then the puked puke until you begin to like it.

For to know nothing is nothing, not to want to know anything likewise, but to be beyond knowing anything, to know you are beyond knowing anything, that is when peace enters in, to the soul of the incurious seeker.

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

Yes, there were times when I forgot not only who I was but that I was, forgot to be.

Vladimir: Did I ever leave you? Estragon: You let me go.

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

Words are the clothes thoughts wear.

Try again. Fail again. Try better.

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

He who has waited long enough, will wait forever. And there comes the hour when nothing more can happen and nobody more can come and all is ended but the waiting that knows itself in vain.

Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that… Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more.

But what matter whether I was born or not, have lived or not, am dead or merely dying. I shall go on doing as I have always done, not knowing what it is I do, nor who I am, nor where I am, nor if I am.

People are bloody ignorant apes.

But he had hardly felt the absurdity of those things, on the one hand, and the necessity of those others, on the other, (for it is rare that the feeling of absurdity is not followed by the feeling of necessity), when he felt the absurdity of those things of which he had just felt the necessity (for it is rare that the feeling of necessity is not followed by the feeling of absurdity.)

My mistakes are my life.

...you must say words, as long as there are any, until they find me, until they say me, strange pain, strange sin, you must go on, perhaps it's done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, 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

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

The old endless chain of love, tolerance, indifference, aversion and disgust

But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late!

There's something dripping in my head. A heart, a heart in my head.

The Tuesday scowls, the Wednesday growls, the Thursday curses, the Friday howls, the Saturday snores, the Sunday yawns, the Monday morns, the Monday morns. The whacks, the moans, the cracks, the groans, the welts, the squeaks, the belts, the shrieks, the pricks, the prayers, the kicks, the tears, the skelps, and the yelps.

To restore silence is the role of objects.

The time-state of attainment eliminates so accurately the time-state of aspiration, that the actual seems the inevitable, and, all conscious intellectual effort to reconstitute the invisible and unthinkable as a reality being fruitless, we are incapable of appreciating our joy by comparing it with our sorrow.

Birth was the death of him.

With all this darkness round me I feel less alone.

Art has nothing to do with clarity, does not dabble in the clear and does not make clear

In my head there are several windows, that I do know, but perhaps it is always the same one, open variously on the parading universe.

Not to want to say, not to know what you want to say, not to be able to say what you think you want to say, and never to stop saying, or hardly ever, that is the thing to keep in mind, even in the heat of composition.

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