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If a play does anything either tragically or comically satirically or farcically — to explain to me why I am alive, it is a good play. If it seems unaware that such questions exist, I tend to suspect that it's a bad one.

— Kenneth Tynan Tynan Right and Left (1967)

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Life

More quotes by Kenneth Tynan

We shall be judged by what we do, not by how we felt while we were doing it.

Tynan Right and Left (1967)

What, when drunk, one sees in other women, one sees in Garbo sober.

Profiles (1990)

A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening.

Tynan Right and Left (1967)

No theater could sanely flourish until there was an umbilical connection between what was happening on the stage and what was happening in the world.

Everyone is vulnerable who is at once gifted and gregarious.

Tynan Right and Left (1967)

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To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

Bertrand Russell Marriage and Morals (1929)

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

William James The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)

Reason is Life's sole arbiter, the magic Laby'rinth's single clue:
Worlds lie above, beyond its ken; what crosses it can ne'er be true.

Richard Francis Burton The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

It is the law of life that if you are kind to someone you feel happy. If you are cruel you are unhappy. And if you hurt someone, you will be hurt back.

Cary Grant Love – That’s All Cary Grant Ever Thinks About (1964)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Kenneth Tynan (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.