82 quotes
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.
Alexander: How the world must have been changing while I was holding it still.
The Coast of Utopia: Voyage (2002)
Language is a finite instrument crudely applied to an infinity of ideas, and one consequence of the failure to take account of this is that modern philosophy has made itself ridiculous by analysing such statements as, "This is a good bacon sandwich," or, "Bedser had a good wicket."
Jumpers (1972)
Bennett seems to be showing alarming signs of irony. I have always found that irony among the lower orders is the first sign of an awakening social consciousness. It remains to be seen whether it will grow into an armed seizure of the means of production, distribution and exchange, or spend itself in liberal journalism.
Travesties (1974)
GUIL: We’re still finding our feet.
PLAYER: I should concentrate on not losing your heads.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966)
ROS: Dark, isn’t it?
GUIL: Not for night.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966)
Michael: "March here, march there, present arms, where's your cap?" — you've no idea, the whole Army's obsessed with playing at soldiers.
The Coast of Utopia: Voyage (2002)
A foreign correspondent is someone who lives in foreign parts and corresponds, usually in the form of essays containing no new facts. Otherwise he's someone who flies around from hotel to hotel and thinks that the most interesting thing about any story is the fact that he has arrived to cover it.
Night and Day (1978)
Their coarseness is the sinew of some kind of brute confidence which is the reason England is home to every shade of political exile. They don't give asylum out of respect for asylum-seekers, but out of respect for themselves. They invented personal liberty, and they know it, and they did it without having any theories about it. They value liberty because it's liberty.
The Coast of Utopia: Salvage (2002)
GUIL: I am relieved. At least we can still count on self interest as a predictable factor.…I suppose it’s the last to go.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966)
Septimus: When we have found all the mysteries and lost all the meaning, we will be all alone, on an empty shore.
Thomasina: Then we will dance. Is this a waltz?
Arcadia (1993)
GUIL: 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.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966)
Most men give advice by the bucket, but take it by the grain.
Misattributed
Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them.
Misattributed
From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts.
Misattributed
If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older.
Misattributed
It is better of course to know useless things than to know nothing.
Misattributed
Good things, when short, are twice as good.
Misattributed
A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar— you pretend it's not there.
Misattributed
If you associate enough with older people who do enjoy their lives, who are not stored away in any golden ghettos, you will gain a sense of continuity and of the possibility for a full life.
Misattributed