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Only the ephemeral is of lasting value.

Eugene Ionesco

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Eugene Ionesco
Age: 84 †
Born: 1909
Born: November 26
Died: 1994
Died: March 28
Diarist
Dramatist
Graphic Artist
Illustrator
Literary Critic
Playwright
Poet
Writer
Stanwood
Washington
Ionesco
Eugen Ionesco
Eugene Ionesco
Lasting
Simplicity
Value
Values
Time
Ephemeral

More quotes by Eugene Ionesco

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I've always been suspicious of collective truths. I think an idea is true when it hasn't been put into words and that the moment it's put into words it becomes exaggerated. Because the moment it's put into words there's an abuse, an excess in the expression of the idea that makes it false.
Eugene Ionesco
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People always try to find base motives behind every good action. We are afraid of pure goodness and of pure evil.
Eugene Ionesco
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A nose that can see is worth two that sniff.
Eugene Ionesco
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Realism falls short of reality. It shrinks it, attenuates it, falsifies it it does not take into account our basic truths and our fundamental obsessions: love, death, astonishment. It presents man in a reduced and estranged perspective. Truth is in our dreams, in the imagination.
Eugene Ionesco
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Nothing makes me more pessimistic than the obligation not to be pessimistic.
Eugene Ionesco
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I started writing for the theatre because I hated it.
Eugene Ionesco
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Many people have delusions of grandeur but you're deluded by triviality.
Eugene Ionesco
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I am, it seems, an avant-garde dramatist. It would even seem obvious since I am present here at discussions on the avant-garde theatre. It is all entirely official. But what does the term avant-garde mean?
Eugene Ionesco
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We have not the time to take our time.
Eugene Ionesco
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All cats die. Socrates is dead. Therefore Socrates is a cat.
Eugene Ionesco
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You've always made the mistake of being yourself.
Eugene Ionesco
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We are made to be immortal, and yet we die. It's horrible, it can't be taken seriously
Eugene Ionesco
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The critic should describe, and not prescribe.
Eugene Ionesco
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There is no religion in which everyday life is not considered a prison there is no philosophy or ideology that does not think that we live in alienation.
Eugene Ionesco
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Drama lies in extreme exaggeration of the feelings, an exaggeration that dislocates flat everyday reality.
Eugene Ionesco
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The Arts are man's most useless ... and essential ... activity.
Eugene Ionesco
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Childhood is the world of miracle or of magic: it is as if creation rose luminously out of the night, all new and fresh and astonishing. Childhood is over the moment things are no longer astonishing. When the world gives you a feeling of déjà vu, when you are used to existence, you become an adult.
Eugene Ionesco
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It's only when I say that everything is incomprehensible that I come as close as possible to understanding the only thing it is given to us to understand.
Eugene Ionesco
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The poet cannot invent new words every time, of course. He uses the words of the tribe. But the handling of the word, the accent, a new articulation, renew them.
Eugene Ionesco
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Explanation separates us from astonishment, which is the only gateway to the incomprehensible.
Eugene Ionesco