Stage Quotes - Page 36

• It is time for thee to be gone, lest the age more decent in its wantonness should laugh at thee and drive thee of the stage.
  [Lat., Tempus abire tibi est, ne . . .
  Rideat et pulset lasciva decentius aetas.]

  Horace

  Laughing, Age, Gone

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• Few rash of any modern nation have a proper sense of an aesthetical whole; they praise and blame by parts; they are charmed by passages. And who has greater reason to rejoice in this than actors, since the stage is ever but a patched and piecemeal matter?

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Acting, Matter, Actors

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• A friendship formed in childhood, in youth,--by happy accident at any stage of rising manhood,--becomes the genius that rules the rest of life.

  Amos Bronson Alcott

  Friendship, Rest Of Life, Childhood

  Amos Bronson Alcott (1868). “Tablets”, p.81

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• There's no better stage than the U.S. Open for me

  Arthur Ashe

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• When, and how, and at what stage of our development did spirituality and our strange notions of religion arise? the need for worship which is nothing more than our frightened refuge into propitiation of a Creator we do not understand? A detective story, the supreme Who-done-it, written in indecipherable hieroglyphics, no Rosetta stone supplied by the consummate Mystifier to tease us poor fumbling unravellers of his plot.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Women, Religion, Plot

  Victoria Sackville-West, Vita Sackville-West (1985). “No Signposts in the Sea”, Penguin Group USA

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• The doing of things from duty is but a stage on the road to the kingdom of truth and love.

  George MacDonald

  And Love, Kingdoms, Duty

  George MacDonald (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)”, p.6068, Delphi Classics

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• ... life is broken down into these stages: you're born and you don't know how anything works; gradually you find out how everything works; technology evolves and slowly there are a few things you can't work; at the end, you don't know how anything works.

  Rita Rudner

  Technology, Broken, Life Is

  Rita Rudner (2008). “I Still Have It . . . I Just Can't Remember Where I Put It: Confessions of a Fiftysomething”, p.1, Crown Archetype

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• I'm at the stage of life when if a girl says no to me I'm profoundly grateful to her.

  Woody Allen

  Girl, Grateful, Ifs

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• Truth travels down from the heights of philosophy to the humblest walks of life, and up from the simplest perceptions of an awakened intellect to the discoveries which almost change the face of the world. At every stage of its progress it is genial, luminous, creative.

  Edward Everett

  Truth, Philosophy, Discovery

  Edward Everett (1840). “Importance of Practical Education and Useful Knowledge: Being a Selection from His Orations and Other Discourses”, p.228

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• Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage,
  Till pitying Nature signs the last release,
  And bids afflicted worth retire to peace.

  Samuel Johnson

  Age, Lasts, Lag

  Samuel Johnson, Thomas Park (1811). “The Poetical Works of Samuel Johnson: Collated with the Best Editions”, p.27

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• I maintain, against the enemies of the stage, that patterns of piety, decently represented, may second the precepts.

  John Dryden

  Drama, Enemy, May

  John Dryden (1970). “The Works of John Dryden, Volume X: Plays: The Tempest, Tyrannick Love, An Evening's Love”, p.109, Univ of California Press

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• [On Katharine Hepburn's stage performance:] She ran the whole gamut of emotions, from A to B.

  Dorothy Parker

  Stage Performance, Emotion, Performances

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• [On Kay Strozzi in The Silent Witness:] Miss Strozzi ... had the temerity to wear as truly horrible a gown as ever I have seen on the American stage. ... Had she not luckily been strangled by a member of the cast while disporting this garment, I should have fought my way to the stage and done her in, myself.

  Dorothy Parker

  Should Have, Missing, Way

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• Man hath a weary pilgrimage,
  As through the word he wends;
  On every stage, from youth to age,
  Still discontent attends.

  Robert Southey

  Men, Age, Youth

  Robert Southey (1866). “The Poetical Works of Robert Southey: Complete in One Volume”, p.118

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• I should dearly love that the world should be ever so little better for my presence. Even on this small stage we have our two sides, and something might be done by throwing all one's weight on the scale of breadth, tolerance, charity, temperance, peace, and kindliness to man and beast. We can't all strike very big blows, and even the little ones count for something.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Men, Blow, Two Sides

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated)”, p.4591, Delphi Classics

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• Does the real thing ever have the perfection of a stage performance?

  Agatha Christie

  Real, Stage Performance, Perfection

  Agatha Christie (2010). “Crooked House”, p.10, HarperCollins UK

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• However long the horror continued, one must not get to the stage of refusing to think about it. To shrink from direct pain was bad enough, but to shrink from vicarious pain was the ultimate cowardice. And whereas to conceal direct pain was a virtue, to conceal vicarious pain was a sin. Only by feeling it to the utmost, and by expressing it, could the rest of the world help to heal the injury which had caused it. Money, food, clothing, shelter - people could give all these and still it would not be enough; it would not absolve them from paying also, in full, the imponderable tribute of grief.

  Jan Struther

  Pain, Grief, Thinking

  Jan Struther (1956). “A pocketful of pebbles”

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• On the Greek stage a drama, or acted story, consisted in reality of three dramas, called together a trilogy, and performed consecutively in the course of one day.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Drama, Reality, Greek

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1858). “The complete works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an introductory essay upon his philosophical and theological opinions”, p.60

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• I have noticed that in plays where the characters on stage laugh a great deal, the people out front laugh very little.

  Jean Kerr

  Character, Play, People

  JEAN KERR (1970). “Penny Candy”

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• People stood on their chairs, cheering and waving. And it was all for me! Waves of love flooded the stage and washed over me. I started to cry. The sweetness of such a moment is impossible to describe. One is both lover and beloved. ... I'd found the one true, enduring romance of my life.

  Bette Davis

  Cheer, People, Romance

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• Men are merely on a lower or higher stage of an eminence, whose summit is God's throne infinitely above all; and there is just as much reason for the wisest as for the simplest man being discontent with his position, as respects the real quantity of knowledge he possesses.

  John Ruskin

  Real, Men, Thrones

  John Ruskin (1912). “The fall”

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• On the stage you try to act real. On the screen you try to be real.

  Shirley MacLaine

  Real, Trying, Actors

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• Familiarity with any great thing removes our awe of it. The great general is only terrible to the enemy; the great poet is frequently scolded by his wife; the children of the great statesman clamber about his knees with perfect trust and impunity; the great actor who is called before the curtain by admiring audiences is often waylaid at the stage door by his creditors.

  L. Frank Baum

  Children, Doors, Perfect

  L. Frank Baum (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of L. Frank Baum (Illustrated)”, p.2783, Delphi Classics

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• The Federal Building's large Ceremonial Courtroom, reserved for show trials, is veneered in executive teak. Bench, counsel tables, jury boxes, entrances, and exits -- all are as formally arranged as an Elizabethan stage. Only the drama is shapeless, at least to those of us who have never seen a trial before. We see only random movements, sequences, comings and goings, no form or agenda apparent. To us the action is less like watching a play than watching an aquarium.

  Shana Alexander

  Drama, Aquariums, Play

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• The stage I chose--a subject fair and free--
  'Tis yours--'tis mine--'tis public property.
  All common exhibitions open lie,
  For praise or censure, to the common eye.
  Hence are a thousand hackney writers fed;
  Hence monthly critics earn their daily bread.
  This is a general tax which all must pay,
  From those who scribble, down to those who play.

  Charles Churchill

  Lying, Eye, Play

  Charles Churchill, George Gilfillan (1855). “The poetical works of Charles Churchill: with memoir, critical dissertation, and explanatory notes / by the Rev. George Gilfillan”, p.43

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