Eugene O'Neill Quotes
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One last word of farewell, dear master and mistress. Whenever you visit my grave, say to yourselves with regret but also happiness in your hearts at the remembrance of my long happy life with you: "Here lies one who loves us and whom we loved." No matter how deep my sleep I shall hear you, and not all the power of death can keep my spirit from wagging a grateful tail.
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I am so far from being a pessimist...on the contrary, in spite of my scars, I am tickled to death at life.
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Those who succeed and do not push on to greater failure are the spiritual middle-classers.
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None of us can help the things life has done to us. They’re done before you realize it, and once they’re done they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you’d like to be, and you’ve lost your true self forever.
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When I was a kid I used to get fun out of my horrors.
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Everything looked and sounded unreal. Nothing was what it is. That's what I wanted - to be alone with myself in another world where truth is untrue and life can hide from itself.
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Life is perhaps best regarded as a bad dream between two awakenings.
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The devil! what beastly things our memories insist on cherishing!
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One should be either sad or joyful. Contentment is a warm sty for eaters and sleepers.
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I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room - and God damn it - died in a hotel room.
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We fought so long against small things that we became small ourselves.
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Irish as a Paddy's pig.
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Like a saint's vision of beatitude. Like the veil of things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second you see—and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second there is meaning! Then the hand lets the veil fall and you are alone, lost in the fog again, and you stumble on toward nowhere, for no good reason!
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The child was diseased at birth, stricken with a hereditary ill that only the most vital men are able to shake off. I mean poverty-the most deadly and prevalent of all diseases.
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The old - like children - talk to themselves, for they have reached that hopeless wisdom of experience which knows that though one were to cry it in the streets to multitudes, or whisper it in the kiss to one's beloved, the only ears that can ever hear one's secrets are one's own!
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Why am I afraid to dance, I who love music and rhythm and grace and song and laughter? Why am I afraid to live, I who love life and the beauty of flesh and the living colors of the earth and sky and sea? Why am I afraid to love, I who love love?
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Take some wood and canvas and nails and things. Build yourself a theater, a stage, light it, learn about it. When you've done that you will probably know how to write a play.
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It is Mystery - the mystery any one man or woman can feel but not understand as the meaning of any event - or accident - in any life on earth.
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It's a great game - the pursuit of happiness.
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When you're 50 you start thinking about things you haven't thought about before. I used to think getting old was about vanity - but actually it's about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial.
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One may not give one's soul to a devil of hate - and remain forever scatheless.
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Her love and tenderness ... gave me the faith in love that enabled me to face my dead at last and write this play-write it with deep pity and understanding and forgiveness for all the four haunted Tyrones.
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The sea hates a coward.
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Life is for each man a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.