Lear Quotes - Page 5

• I'm mainly an airport author, and if you're trying to take your mind off the journey, you're not going to read 'King Lear.'

  Maeve Binchy

  Kings, Journey, Airports

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• We become lovers when we see Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet makes us students. The blood of Duncan is upon our hands, with Timon werage against the world, and when Lear wanders out upon the heath the terror of madness touches us. Ours is the white sinlessness of Desdemona, and ours, also, the sin of Iago.

  Oscar Wilde

  Blood, Hands, White

  Oscar Wilde, Merlin Holland (2003). “Collins complete works of Oscar Wilde”, HarperCollins UK

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• Norman Lear considers almost any Christian who speaks up for and acts on his or her faith to be 'dangerous.'

  Donald Wildmon

  Christian, Religious, Speak

  Donald E. Wildmon, Randall Nulton (1989). “Don Wildmon: the man the networks love to hate”, Bristol House Ltd

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• King Lear is undoubtedly the greatest play ever written by Shakespeare - or anybody else for that matter. Hamlet is certainly great, but it doesn't contain as many elements of humanity as we see in Lear.

  Paul Scofield

  Kings, Play, Humanity

  "Scofield's Lear voted the greatest Shakespeare performance". Royah Nikkhah, The Telegraph, August 22, 2004.

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• In the United States...politics is purged of all menace, all sinister quality, all genuine significance, and stuffed with such gorgeous humors, such inordinate farce that one comes to the end of a campaign with one's ribs loose, and ready for King Lear, or a hanging, or a course of medical journals.

  H. L. Mencken

  Kings, Political, Quality

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• We might not object to the statement that Lear deserved to suffer for his folly, selfishness and tyranny; but to assert that he deserved to suffer what he did suffer is to do violence not merely to language but to any healthy moral sense.

  Andrew Coyle Bradley

  Healthy, Suffering, Selfishness

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• Complaining about boring football is a little like complaining about the sad ending of King Lear: it misses the point somehow.

  Nick Hornby

  Football, Kings, Missing

  Nick Hornby (2005). “Fever Pitch”, p.109, Penguin UK

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• I think Shakespeare got drunk after he finished King Lear. That he had a ball writing it.

  Louis Auchincloss

  Kings, Writing, Thinking

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• Bush has not read enough books to have a developed moral sense. The fewer books you read, the easier it is to become fundamental. In some ways my antiwar stand here is also a stand on anti-literacy. Someone should get G.W. into a reading program, get him to join a book club. Have him read Hamlet, King Lear.

  Sherman Alexie

  Kings, Book, Reading

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• Grant me an old man's frenzy, Myself must I remake Till I am Timon and Lear Or that William Blake Who beat upon the wall Till Truth obeyed his call.

  William Butler Yeats

  Wall, Truth, Men

  1936 'An Acre of Grass', stanza 3. Collected in New Poems (1938).

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• Shakespeare without Othello, Lear, Macbeth and Hamlet would be all too much like Hamlet without the prince.

  Brand Blanshard

  Character, Would Be, Too Much

  Brand Blanshard (2014). “Reason and Analysis”, p.476, Routledge

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• Counterfeit Kings is the King Lear of space operas. Science fiction has a fresh, new, no-nonsense voice and his name is Adam Connell.

  Steven-Elliot Altman

  Kings, Names, Voice

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• Heaven blazing into the head: Tragedy wrought to its uttermost. Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages And all the drop-scenes drop at once Upon a hundred thousand stages It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.

  William Butler Yeats

  Heaven, Tragedy, Scene

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.250, Wordsworth Editions

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• A lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than by all the dry volumes of ethics, and divinity that ever were written.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Daughter, Kings, Honesty

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.234, Cambridge University Press

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• There isn't a King Lear for women, or a Henry V, or a Richard III. You reach a level where you can handle that stuff technically and mentally, and it's not there.

  Helen Mirren

  Kings, Levels, Stuff

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• It's difficult for most people to imagine the creative process in tennis. Seemingly it's just an athletic matter of hitting the ball consistently well within the boundaries of the court. That analysis is just as specious as thinking that the difficulty in portraying King Lear on stage is learning all the lines.

  Virginia Wade

  Kings, Thinking, People

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• To paraphrase Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear, and all those guys, "I wish I had known this some time ago.

  Roger Zelazny

  Oedipus, Guy, Wish

  Roger Zelazny (1978*). “Sign of the unicorn. The hand of Oberon. The Courts of Chaos”

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• Thou whoreson zed! Thou unnecessary letter! My lord, if you will give me leave, I will tread this unbolted villain into mortar, and daub the wall of a jakes with him. *all cheer for Shakespearean insults*

  William Shakespeare

  Cheer, Wall, Giving

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• Lear, Macbeth. Mercutio – they live on their own as it were. The newspapers are full of them, if we were only the Shakespeares to see it. Have you ever been in a Police Court? Have you ever watched tradesmen behind their counters? My soul, the secrets walking in the streets! You jostle them at every corner. There's a Polonius in every first-class railway carriage, and as many Juliets as there are boarding-schools. ... How inexhaustibly rich everything is, if you only stick to life.

  Walter de La Mare

  School, Class, Soul

  Walter De la Mare (1933). “The Walter De La Mare Omnibus: Henry Brocken ; The Return ; Memoirs of a Midget”

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• The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea In a beautiful pea-green boat: They took some honey, and plenty of money Wrapped up in a five-pound note. . . They dined on mince and slices of quince, Which they ate with a runcible spoon; And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, They danced by the light of the moon, The moon, The moon, They danced by the light of the moon.

  Edward Lear

  Beautiful, Moon, Light

  "The Owl and the Pussy-Cat" l. 21 (1871)

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• When King Lear dies in act five, do you know what Shakespeare has written? He has written, 'He dies.' No more. No fanfare, no metaphor, no brilliant final words. The culmination of the most influential piece of dramatic literature is, 'He dies.' Now I am not asking you to be happy at my leaving but all I ask you to do is to turn the page and let the next story begin. -- Mr. Magorium

  Suzanne Weyn

  Kings, Leaving, Pages

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• I think you have to find the humanity in the character and then the deterioration is a part of the process - the journey of the character. It's like playing King Lear. You can start off as a nice old man who finishes up crazy.

  David Wenham

  Kings, Crazy, Nice

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• I have three daughters and I find as a result I played King Lear almost without rehearsal.

  Peter Ustinov

  Daughter, Kings, Honesty

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• Hegel seems to me to be always wanting to say that things which look different are really the same. Whereas my interest is in showing that things which look the same are really different. I was thinking of using as a motto for my book a quotation from King Lear: 'I’ll teach you differences'. ... 'You’d be surprised' wouldn’t be a bad motto either.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Kings, Book, Thinking

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• I have no desire to play King Lear or Hamlet. I never had a grand ambition. I just followed my nose.

  Liam Neeson

  Kings, Ambition, Play

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