A collection of insightful quotes and sayings by Samuel Beckett on love, failure, plays, books, influences, habit, silence, life, faults, extinction, die, artist and philosophers
96 Samuel Beckett Quotes That Prod You To ‘Fail Better’
Samuel Beckett was a prolific Irish avant-garde poet, novelist, literary translator, theatre director and playwright. He spent most of his adult life in Paris and wrote both in French and English. In his later career, he became growingly minimalist. He is regarded as one of the prominent figures in the ‘Theatre of Absurd.' Some of his best-known works include, ‘Happy Days,’ ‘Waiting for Godot,’ ‘Not I,’ ‘Murphy,’ and ‘Krapp’s Last Tape’ amongst various others. He was also awarded the ‘Nobel Prize in Literature’ in 1969. We have created a corpus of meaningful sayings and quotes by Samuel Beckett, which have been curated from his works, poems, thoughts, novels, translations, plays, writings, and life. Go through the most popular and motivational thoughts and quotes by Samuel Beckett that might just change the way you look at life.
Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn't want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn't want them back.
VLADIMIR: What do they say?
ESTRAGON: They talk about their lives.
VLADIMIR: To have lived is not enough for them.
ESTRAGON: They have to talk about it.
Samuel Beckett
What is that unforgettable line?
Samuel Beckett
It was long since I had longed for anything and the effect on me was horrible.
Yes, in my life, since we must call it so, there were three things, the inability to speak, the inability to be silent, and solitude, that’s what I’ve had to make the best of.
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.
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.
When a man in a forest thinks he is going forward in a straight line, in reality he is going in a circle, I did my best to go in a circle, hoping to go in a straight line.
For in me there have always been two fools, among others, one asking nothing better than to stay where he is and the other imagining that life might be slightly less horrible a little further on.
Words and images run riot in my head, pursuing, flying, clashing, merging, endlessly. But beyond this tumult there is a great calm, and a great indifference, never really to be troubled by anything again.
Let us say before i go any further, that i forgive nobody. i wish them all an atrocious life in the fires of icy hell and in the execrable generations to come.
Estragon: Suppose we repented.
Vladimir: Repented what?
Estragon: Oh...(He reflects.) We wouldn’t have
to go into the details.
Vladimir: Our being born?
Samuel Beckett
The search for the means to put an end to things, an end to speech, is what enables the discourse to continue.
 I remain in the dark. )
ESTRAGON:
Perhaps he can see into the future. )
 Ah that's a good one! )
 All that old misery. (Pause.) Once wasn't enough for you. )
 We wouldn’t have
to go into the details.
Vladimir: Our being born? )
