96 Samuel Beckett Quotes That Prod You To ‘Fail Better’

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

Think

  

All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

  

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

  

The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.

  

Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

  

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

  

Estragon: We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression we exist? Vladimir: Yes, yes, we're magicians.

  

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

Like

  

My mistakes are my life.

Life

  

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

  

Don't touch me! Don't question me! Don't speak to me! Stay with me!

  

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

  

Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.

  

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

Me

  

I use the words you taught me. If they don't mean anything any more, teach me others. Or let me be silent.

Me

  

Let's go." "We can't." "Why not?" "We're waiting for Godot.

  

Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It's awful.

  

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.

Me

  

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

  

Words are all we have.

  

Nothing is more real than nothing.

  

The only sin is the sin of being born

  

ESTRAGON: I can't go on like this. VLADIMIR: That's what you think.

Like , Think

  

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

  

Don’t wait to be hunted to hide, that was always my motto.

  

Estragon: I'm like that. Either I forget right away or I never forget.

Like , Never

  

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

  

Estragon: People are bloody ignorant apes.

  

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.

  

What is that unforgettable line?

  

It was long since I had longed for anything and the effect on me was horrible.

Me

  

I pause to record that I feel in extraordinary form. Delirium perhaps.

  

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.

Life

  

Estragon: Nothing to be done.

  

You cried for night - it falls. Now cry in darkness.

  

Habit is a great deadener.

  

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

  

ESTRAGON: Don't touch me! Don't question me! Don't speak to me! Stay with me! VLADIMIR: Did I ever leave you? ESTRAGON: You let me go.

Me

  

Vladimir: I don't understand. Estragon: Use your intelligence, can't you? Vladimir uses his intelligence. Vladimir: (finally) I remain in the dark.

  

POZZO: I am blind. (Silence.) ESTRAGON: Perhaps he can see into the future.

  

Then I went back into the house and wrote, It is midnight. The rain is beating on the windows. It was not midnight. It was not raining.

  

Estragon: What about hanging ourselves? Vladimir: Hmm. It'd give us an erection.

  

Silence, yes, but what silence! For it is all very fine to keep silence, but one has also to consider the kind of silence one keeps.

  

To every man his little cross. Till he dies. And is forgotten.

  

The tears stream down my cheeks from my unblinking eyes. What makes me weep so? There is nothing saddening here. Perhaps it is liquefied brain.

Me

  

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

  

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

  

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

  

There is man in his entirety, blaming his shoe when his foot is guilty.

  

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

Time

  

There is [...] a last even of last times of saying if you do not love me I shall not be loved if I do not love you I shall not love

Me

  

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

  

I don’t like animals. It’s a strange thing, I don’t like men and I don’t like animals. As for God, he is beginning to disgust me.

Like , Me

  

That's how it is on this bitch of an earth.

  

I've got my faults, but changing my tune isn't one of them.

  

We always find something, eh Didi, to let us think we exist?

Think

  

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

  

Words are the clothes thoughts wear.

  

I’m like that. Either I forget right away or I never forget.

Like , Never

  

There's no lack of void.

  

The essential doesn't change.

  

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.

  

We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. But habit is a great deadener.

Time

  

Spend the years of learning squandering Courage for the years of wandering Through a world politely turning From the loutishness of learning.

  

HAMM: We're not beginning to... to... mean something? CLOV: Mean something! You and I, mean something! (Brief laugh.) Ah that's a good one!

  

We spend our life, it's ours, trying to bring together in the same instant a ray of sunshine and a free bench

Life , Together , Trying

  

It's so nice to know where you're going, in the early stages. It almost rids you of the wish to go there.

  

Poets are the sense, philosophers­­ the intelligence­­ of humanity.

  

Unfathomable mind: now beacon, now sea.

  

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

  

[A]ll I want to do is sit on my ass and fart and think of Dante.

Think

  

Ever Tried. Ever Failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

  

But I know what darkness is, it accumulates, thickens, then suddenly bursts and drowns everything.

  

Life is habit. Or rather life is a succession of habits.

Life

  

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.

  

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

Me

  

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.

Never

  

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.

  

Use your head, can't you, use your head, you're on earth, there's no cure for that!

  

How do you manage it, she said, at your age? I told her I'd been saving up for her all my life.

Life

  

How hideous is the semicolon.

  

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.

Life , Me

  

My dear Tom, Delighted to get your letter. Do write again. This life is terrible and I don't understand how it can be endured.

Life

  

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.

Never

  

What kind of country is this where a woman can't weep her heart out on the highways and byways without being tormented by retired bill-brokers!

  

I love order. It's my dream. A world where all would be silent and still, and each thing in its last place, under the last dust.

  

Decidedly it will never have been given to me to finish anything, except perhaps breathing. One must not be greedy.

Me , Never

  

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.

Life

  

When you're in the shit up to your neck, there's nothing left to do but sing.

  

Be again, be again. (Pause.) All that old misery. (Pause.) Once wasn't enough for you.

  

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

Time

  

Estragon: Suppose we repented. Vladimir: Repented what? Estragon: Oh...(He reflects.) We wouldn’t have to go into the details. Vladimir: Our being born?

  

The search for the means to put an end to things, an end to speech, is what enables the discourse to continue.

  

Dying for dark - the darker the worse. Strange.