"Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter, try again, fail again, fail better."
— Samuel Beckett

"You're on Earth. There's no cure for that."
— Samuel Beckett

"The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh."
— Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts)

"We are all born mad. Some remain so."
— Samuel Beckett

"I can't go on, I'll go on."
— Samuel Beckett (I Can't Go On, I'll Go on: A Selection from Samuel Beckett's Work)

"The end is in the beginning and yet you go on."
— Samuel Beckett (Endgame)

"I use the words you taught me. If they don't mean anything any more, teach me others. Or let me be silent."
— Samuel Beckett (Endgame)

"My mistakes are my life."
— Samuel Beckett

"Estragon: Nothing to be done."
— Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot)

"Normally I didn’t see a great deal. I didn’t hear a great deal either. I didn’t pay attention. Strictly speaking I wasn’t there. Strictly speaking I believe I’ve never been anywhere."
— Samuel Beckett

"Estragon: We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression we exist?"
— Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts)

"Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn't want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn't want them back."
— Samuel Beckett

"Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness."
— Samuel Beckett

"I always thought old age would be a writer’s best chance. Whenever I read the late work of Goethe or W. B. Yeats I had the impertinence to identify with it. Now, my memory’s gone, all the old fluency’s disappeared. I don’t write a single sentence without saying to myself, ‘It’s a lie!’ So I know I was right. It’s the best chance I’ve ever had."
— Samuel Beckett

"If you don't know where you are currently standing, your dead"
— Samuel Beckett (Happy Days)

"Estragon: People are bloody ignorant apes."
— Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts)

"Vladimir: There’s man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet."
— Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts)

"The only sin is the sin of being born"
— Samuel Beckett

"there is [...]
a last even of last times of saying
if you do not love me I shall not be loved
if I do not love you I shall not love"
— Samuel Beckett (Cascando and Other Short Dramatic Pieces)

"The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new."
— Samuel Beckett (Murphy)

"We spend our life, it's ours, trying to bring together in the same instant a ray of sunshine and a free bench""
— Samuel Beckett

"Memories are killing. So you must not think of certain things, of those that are dear to you, or rather you must think of them, for if you don’t there is the danger of finding them, in your mind, little by little."
— Samuel Beckett

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
— Samuel Beckett

"She felt, as she felt so often with Murphy, spattered with words that went dead as soon as they sounded; each word obliterated, before it had time to make sense, by the word that came next; so that in the end she did not know what had been said. It was like difficult music heard for the first time."
— Samuel Beckett (Murphy)

"The end is in the beginning and yet you go on."
— Samuel Beckett (Endgame)

"What kind of country is this where a woman can't weep her heart out on the highways and byways without being tormented by retired bill-brokers!"
— Samuel Beckett

"Don't wait to be hunted to hide."
— Samuel Beckett

""Try again.
Fail Again.
Fail Better.""
— Samuel Beckett

"The earth makes a sound as of sighs and the last drops fall from the emptied cloudless sky. A small boy, stretching out his hands and looking up at the blue sky, asked his mother how such a thing was possible. Fuck off, she said."
— Samuel Beckett

"Don't touch me! Don't question me! Don't speak to me! Stay with me!"
— Samuel Beckett

"And truly it little matters what I say, this or that or any other thing. Saying is inventing. Wrong, very rightly wrong. You invent nothing, you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum one day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is wept. "
— Samuel Beckett (Molloy)

"I pause to record that I feel in extraordinary form. Delirium perhaps."
— Samuel Beckett (Malone Dies)

"I've got my faults, but changing my tune isn't one of them."
— Samuel Beckett

"Dance first. Think later. It's the natural order."
— Samuel Beckett

"I open the door of the cell and go. I am so bowed I only see my feet, if I open my eyes, and between my legs a little trail of black dust. I say to myself that the earth is extinguished, though I never saw it lit."
— Samuel Beckett

"The fact would seem to be, if in my situation one may speak of facts, not only that I shall have to speak of things of which I cannot speak, but also, which is even more interesting, but also that I, which is if possible even more interesting, that I shall have to, I forget, no matter. And at the same time I am obliged to speak. I shall never be silent. Never. "
— Samuel Beckett (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable)

"آنچه عشق می خوانند نوعی تبعید است."
— Samuel Beckett

"...and a dream away in space with neither her nor there where all the footsteps ever fell can never fare nearer to anywhere nor from anywhere further away. Nor for in the end again by degrees or as though switched on dark falls there again that certain dark that alone certain ashes can. Through it who knows yet another end beneath a cloudless sky of a last end if ever there had to be another absolutely had to be."
— Samuel Beckett

"Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaquaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown but time will tell and suffers like the divine Miranda with those who for reasons unknown but time will tell are plunged into torment plunged into fire whose fire flames if that continues and who can doubt it will fire the firmament that is to say blast hell to heaven so blue still and calm so calm with a calm which even though intermittent is better than nothing but not so fast and considering what is more that as a result of the labors left unfinished"
— Samuel Beckett

"Then I went back into the house and wrote, It is midnight. The rain is beating on the windows. It was not midnight. It was not raining."
— Samuel Beckett (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable)

"spend the years of learning squandering
courage for the years of wandering
through a world politely turning
from the loutishness of learning."
— Samuel Beckett

""the last at last seen of him
himself unseen by him
and of himself"

A rest.

"The last Mr. Murphy saw of Mr. Endon was Mr. Murphy unseen by Mr. Endon. This was also the last Murphy saw of Murphy."

A rest.

"The relation between Mr. Murphy and Mr. Endon could not have better summed up than by the former's sorrow at seeing himself in the latter's immunity from seeing anything but himself."

A long rest.

"Mr. Murphy is a speck in Mr. Endon's unseen.""
— Samuel Beckett (Murphy)

"Pozzo: Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It's abominable! When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we'll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you? They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more. "
— Samuel Beckett

"Hamm: Go and get the oilcan.

Clov: What for?

Hamm: To oil the castors.

Clov: I oiled them yesterday.

Hamm: Yesterday! What does that mean? Yesterday!

Clov (violently): That means that bloody awful day, long ago, before this bloody awful day. I use the words you taught me. If they don't mean anything anymore, teach me others. Or let me be silent."
— Samuel Beckett (Endgame)

"I can't go on. I'll go on."
— Samuel Beckett

"Je suis comme ça. Ou j'oublie tout de suite ou je n'oublie jamais."

Samuel BECKETT, En attendant Godot

I'm like that. Either I forget right away or I never forget. "
— Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts)

"There is this to be said for Dachsunds of such length and lowness as Nelly, that it makes very little difference to their appearance whether they stand, sit or lie."
— Samuel Beckett

"I must go on. I can't go on. I'll go on."
— Samuel Beckett

"Fail, Fail again. Fail better."
— Samuel Beckett

"No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found.
"
— Samuel Beckett