Search quotes

Link	Quote	Tags	Author
32e6773	We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.		Tom Stoppard
9b0d9a3	It is a defect of God's humor that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them.	love	Tom Stoppard
5ee7d14	Look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.	opportunities exit chances entrance doors transition passage	Tom Stoppard
df82952	Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn't disdain what lives only for a day. It pours the whole of itself into the each moment. We don't value the lily less for not being made of flint and built to last. Life's bounty is in its flow, later is too late. Where is the song when it's been sung? The dance when it's been danced? It's only we humans who want to own th..	death happiness moment-of-being tom-stoppard utopias meaning-of-life	Tom Stoppard
97b96df	There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said -- no. But somehow we missed it.	evil	Tom Stoppard
0a6d35e	We're actors -- we're the opposite of people!	theatre people humanity humor archetypes symbolism	Tom Stoppard
0a6c5cf	Life in a box is better than no life at all, I expect. You'd have a chance at least. You could lie there thinking: Well, at least I'm not dead.		Tom Stoppard
21f1ab4	I mean, if Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at twenty-two, the history of music would have been very different. As would the history of aviation, of course.		Tom Stoppard
4e967a7	Rosencrantz: I don't believe in it anyway. Guildenstern: What? Rosencrantz: England. Guildenstern: Just a conspiracy of cartographers, then?		Tom Stoppard
6afd417	Life is a gamble, at terrible odds. If it were a bet you wouldn't take it.		Tom Stoppard
9772033	Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where's it going to end?		Tom Stoppard
84d8d42	Pirates could happen to anyone.		Tom Stoppard
48a4c84	Words... They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they're no good any more... I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will spea..		Tom Stoppard
51a3b80	We are tied down to a language which makes up in obscurity what it lacks in style.		Tom Stoppard
73cc729	Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one, a moment, in childhood, when it first occurred to you that you don't go on forever. It must have been shattering, stamped into one's memory. And yet I can't remember it. It never occurred to me at all. We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the word for it, before we know that there are words,out we come, bloodied and squalling....		Tom Stoppard
a9731e6	We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.	theatre life exit actors entrance transition passage drama	Tom Stoppard
4a1b962	Rosencrantz: We might as well be dead. Do you think death could possibly be a boat? Guildenstern: No, no, no... Death is...not. Death isn't. You take my meaning. Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can't not-be on a boat. Rosencrantz: I've frequently not been on boats. Guildenstern: No, no, no--what you've been is not on boats.	death	Tom Stoppard
7a62e5c	We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Math..	stoppard play	Tom Stoppard
4d2547d	Words, words. They're all we have to go on.		Tom Stoppard
51fd073	I am not my body. My body is nothing without me.	life health soul	Tom Stoppard
bb7f1b2	We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see.		Tom Stoppard
b123905	Be happy -- if you're not even happy, what's so good about surviving?	struggle optimism happiness life survival	Tom Stoppard
c608c28	Stark raving sane.		Tom Stoppard
b080f39	The colours red, blue and green are real. The colour yellow is a mystical experience shared by everybody.		Tom Stoppard
5310bd4	The ordinary-sized stuff which is our lives, the things people write poetry about--clouds--daffodils--waterfalls--what happens in a cup of coffee when the cream goes in--these things are full of mystery, as mysterious to us as the heavens were to the Greeks.		Tom Stoppard
4cb9446	What a fine persecution--to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.		Tom Stoppard
f569a9f	It would have been nice to have had unicorns.		Tom Stoppard
d97522e	It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting.	political-philosophy	Tom Stoppard
1244d07	reality, the name we give to the common experience.		Tom Stoppard
9c3fa43	A man breaking his journey between one place and another at a third place of no name, character, population or significance, sees a unicorn cross his path and disappear. That in itself is startling, but there are precedents for mystical encounters of various kinds, or to be less extreme, a choice of persuasions to put it down to fancy; until--"My God," says a second man, "I must be dreaming, I thought I saw a unicorn." At which point, a dim..	reality mystical-encounter unicorn	Tom Stoppard
326f04f	I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead.	writing	Tom Stoppard
21280c8	It makes me so happy. To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing.... A door like this has cracked open five or six times since we got up on our hind legs. It's the best possible time of being alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.	tom-stoppard beginning	Tom Stoppard
1f8bcf9	Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.	imagination modern-art skill	Tom Stoppard
e212a89	We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the word for it. Before we know that there are words. Out we come, bloodied and squalling, with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass, there's only one direction. And time is its only measure.		Tom Stoppard
447ec45	When we have found all the mysteries and lost all the meaning, we will be alone, on an empty shore.		Tom Stoppard
31f3fd9	Wheels have been set in motion, and they have their own pace, to which we are...condemned. Each move is dictated by the previous one - that is the meaning of order. If we start being arbitrary it'll just be a shambles: at least, let us hope so. Because if we happened, just happened to discover, or even suspect, that our spontaneity was part of their order, we'd know that we were lost. A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty - and, by which definiti..	spontaneity order	Tom Stoppard
dd4f9ed	It's the wanting to know that makes us matter.	tom-stoppard	Tom Stoppard
5e661ef	What are a friend's books for if not to be borrowed?		Tom Stoppard
0e914b0	Rosencrantz: Shouldn't we be doing something--constructive? Guildenstern: What did you have in mind? ... A short, blunt human pyramid...?		Tom Stoppard
85d0e64	Audiences know what to expect, and that is all that they are prepared to believe in.		Tom Stoppard
418b867	It's the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.		Tom Stoppard
697b083	For all the compasses in the world, there's only one direction, and time is its only measure.	time	Tom Stoppard
b5aac71	The unpredictable and the predetermined unfold together to make everything the way it is.		Tom Stoppard
770e831	I love love. I love having a lover and being one. The insularity of passion. I love it. I love the way it blurs the distinction between everyone who isn't one's lover.	relationships	Tom Stoppard

32e6773

We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.

Tom Stoppard

9b0d9a3

It is a defect of God's humor that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them.

love

Tom Stoppard

5ee7d14

Look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.

opportunities exit chances entrance doors transition passage

Tom Stoppard

df82952

Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn't disdain what lives only for a day. It pours the whole of itself into the each moment. We don't value the lily less for not being made of flint and built to last. Life's bounty is in its flow, later is too late. Where is the song when it's been sung? The dance when it's been danced? It's only we humans who want to own th..

death happiness moment-of-being tom-stoppard utopias meaning-of-life

Tom Stoppard

97b96df

There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said -- no. But somehow we missed it.

evil

Tom Stoppard

0a6d35e

We're actors -- we're the opposite of people!

theatre people humanity humor archetypes symbolism

Tom Stoppard

0a6c5cf

Life in a box is better than no life at all, I expect. You'd have a chance at least. You could lie there thinking: Well, at least I'm not dead.

Tom Stoppard

21f1ab4

I mean, if Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at twenty-two, the history of music would have been very different. As would the history of aviation, of course.

Tom Stoppard

4e967a7

Rosencrantz: I don't believe in it anyway. Guildenstern: What? Rosencrantz: England. Guildenstern: Just a conspiracy of cartographers, then?

Tom Stoppard

6afd417

Life is a gamble, at terrible odds. If it were a bet you wouldn't take it.

Tom Stoppard

9772033

Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where's it going to end?

Tom Stoppard

84d8d42

Pirates could happen to anyone.

Tom Stoppard

48a4c84

Words... They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they're no good any more... I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will spea..

Tom Stoppard

51a3b80

We are tied down to a language which makes up in obscurity what it lacks in style.

Tom Stoppard

73cc729

Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one, a moment, in childhood, when it first occurred to you that you don't go on forever. It must have been shattering, stamped into one's memory. And yet I can't remember it. It never occurred to me at all. We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the word for it, before we know that there are words,out we come, bloodied and squalling....

Tom Stoppard

a9731e6

We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.

theatre life exit actors entrance transition passage drama

Tom Stoppard

4a1b962

Rosencrantz: We might as well be dead. Do you think death could possibly be a boat? Guildenstern: No, no, no... Death is...not. Death isn't. You take my meaning. Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can't not-be on a boat. Rosencrantz: I've frequently not been on boats. Guildenstern: No, no, no--what you've been is not on boats.

death

Tom Stoppard

7a62e5c

We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Math..

stoppard play

Tom Stoppard

4d2547d

Words, words. They're all we have to go on.

Tom Stoppard

51fd073

I am not my body. My body is nothing without me.

life health soul

Tom Stoppard

bb7f1b2

We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see.

Tom Stoppard

b123905

Be happy -- if you're not even happy, what's so good about surviving?

struggle optimism happiness life survival

Tom Stoppard

c608c28

Stark raving sane.

Tom Stoppard

b080f39

The colours red, blue and green are real. The colour yellow is a mystical experience shared by everybody.

Tom Stoppard

5310bd4

The ordinary-sized stuff which is our lives, the things people write poetry about--clouds--daffodils--waterfalls--what happens in a cup of coffee when the cream goes in--these things are full of mystery, as mysterious to us as the heavens were to the Greeks.

Tom Stoppard

4cb9446

What a fine persecution--to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

Tom Stoppard

f569a9f

It would have been nice to have had unicorns.

Tom Stoppard

d97522e

It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting.

political-philosophy

Tom Stoppard

1244d07

reality, the name we give to the common experience.

Tom Stoppard

9c3fa43

A man breaking his journey between one place and another at a third place of no name, character, population or significance, sees a unicorn cross his path and disappear. That in itself is startling, but there are precedents for mystical encounters of various kinds, or to be less extreme, a choice of persuasions to put it down to fancy; until--"My God," says a second man, "I must be dreaming, I thought I saw a unicorn." At which point, a dim..

reality mystical-encounter unicorn

Tom Stoppard

326f04f

I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead.

writing

Tom Stoppard

21280c8

It makes me so happy. To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing.... A door like this has cracked open five or six times since we got up on our hind legs. It's the best possible time of being alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.

tom-stoppard beginning

Tom Stoppard

1f8bcf9

Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.

imagination modern-art skill

Tom Stoppard

e212a89

We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the word for it. Before we know that there are words. Out we come, bloodied and squalling, with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass, there's only one direction. And time is its only measure.

Tom Stoppard

447ec45

When we have found all the mysteries and lost all the meaning, we will be alone, on an empty shore.

Tom Stoppard

31f3fd9

Wheels have been set in motion, and they have their own pace, to which we are...condemned. Each move is dictated by the previous one - that is the meaning of order. If we start being arbitrary it'll just be a shambles: at least, let us hope so. Because if we happened, just happened to discover, or even suspect, that our spontaneity was part of their order, we'd know that we were lost. A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty - and, by which definiti..

spontaneity order

Tom Stoppard

dd4f9ed

It's the wanting to know that makes us matter.

tom-stoppard

Tom Stoppard

5e661ef

What are a friend's books for if not to be borrowed?

Tom Stoppard

0e914b0

Rosencrantz: Shouldn't we be doing something--constructive? Guildenstern: What did you have in mind? ... A short, blunt human pyramid...?

Tom Stoppard

85d0e64

Audiences know what to expect, and that is all that they are prepared to believe in.

Tom Stoppard

418b867

It's the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.

Tom Stoppard

697b083

For all the compasses in the world, there's only one direction, and time is its only measure.

time

Tom Stoppard

b5aac71

The unpredictable and the predetermined unfold together to make everything the way it is.

Tom Stoppard

770e831

I love love. I love having a lover and being one. The insularity of passion. I love it. I love the way it blurs the distinction between everyone who isn't one's lover.

relationships

Tom Stoppard