Quote

It is better to adopt the simplest explanation, even if it is not simple, even if it does not explain very much. A bright light is not necessary, a taper is all one needs to live in strangeness, if it faithfully burns.

Samuel Beckett

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Samuel Beckett
Age: 83 †
Born: 1906
Born: April 13
Died: 1989
Died: December 22
Artist
Author
Cricketer
Film Director
French Resistance Fighter
Intellectual
Linguist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
Teacher
Dublin city
Samuel Barclay Beckett
Andrew Belis
Sam Beckett
Sa-miao-erh Pei-kʻo-tʻe
Samuel Beḳeṭ
Light
Burns
Doe
Adopt
Better
Simplest
Live
Explanation
Needs
Bright
Even
Explain
Taper
Much
Necessary
Faithfully
Simple
Strangeness

More quotes by Samuel Beckett

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The search for the means to put an end to things, an end to speech, is what enables the discourse to continue.
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We always find something, eh Didi, to let us think we exist?
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To have been always what I am - and so changed from what I was.
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Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards, I take the air there willingly, perhaps more willingly than elsewhere, when take the air I must.
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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.
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I want very much to be back in the caul, on my back in the dark forever.
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Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.' You won't believe what you can accomplish by attempting the impossible with the courage to repeatedly fail better.
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Enough of acting the infant who has been told so often how he was found under a cabbage that in the end he remembers the exact spot in the garden and the kind of life he led there before joining the family circle.
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I know those little phrases that seem so innocuous, and, once you let them in, pollute the whole of speech. 'Nothing is more real than nothing.' They rise up out of the pit and know no rest until they drag you down into its dark.
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I hope I am not too old to take it up seriously, nor too stupid about machines to qualify as a commercial pilot. I do not feel like spending the rest of my life writing books that no one will read. It is not as though I wanted to write them.
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Unfathomable mind, now beacon, now sea.
Samuel Beckett
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I try. I fail. I try again. I fail better.
Samuel Beckett
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Poetry is essentially the antithesis of Metaphysics: Metaphysics purge the mind of the senses and cultivate the disembodiment of the spiritual Poetry is all passionate and feeling and animates the inanimate Metaphysics are most perfect when concerned with universals Poetry, when most concerned with particulars.
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The only sin is the sin of being born.
Samuel Beckett
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Deplorable mania, when something happens, to inquire what.
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Art has nothing to do with clarity, does not dabble in the clear and does not make clear
Samuel Beckett
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The short winter’s day was drawing to a close. It seems to me sometimes that these are the only days I have ever known, and especially that most charming moment of all, just before night wipes them out.
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Sometimes I wonder if I'm in my right mind. Then it passes off and I'm as intelligent as ever.
Samuel Beckett
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How long have I been here, what a question, I've often wondered. And often I could answer, An hour, a month, a year, a century, depending on what I meant by here, and me, and being, and there I never went looking for extravagant meanings, there I never much varied, only the here would sometimes seem to vary.
Samuel Beckett
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I could not have gone through the awful wretched mess of life without having left a stain upon the silence.
Samuel Beckett