Tom Stoppard Quotes
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The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means.
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Beauty is desired in order that it may be befouled; not for its own sake, but for the joy brought by the certainty of profaning it.
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Pirates could happen to anyone.
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It's no trick loving somebody at their best. Love is loving them at their worst.
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I can put two and two together, you know. Do not think you are dealing with a man who has lost his grapes.
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I think that the present is worth attention, one shouldn't sacrifice it to future conceptions of, of this future or that future.
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I read for interest and enjoyment, and when I cease to enjoy it I stop.
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Childhood is Last Chance Gulch for happiness. After that, you know too much.
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Save the gerund and screw the whale.
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If you were handed power on a plate you'd be left fighting over a plate.
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What a fine persecution—to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.
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Comparing what we're looking for misses the point. It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we're going out the way we came in. That's why you can't believe in the afterlife, Valentine. Believe in the after, by all means, but not the life. Believe in God, the soul, the spirit, the infinite, believe in angels if you like, but not in the great celestial get-together for an exchange of views. If the answers are in the back of the book I can wait, but what a drag. Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final.
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If knowledge isn't self-knowledge it isn't doing much, mate. Is the universe expanding? Is it contracting? Is it standing on one leg and singing 'When Father Painted the Parlour'? Leave me out. I can expand my universe without you. 'She walks into beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies, and all that's best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes.
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We give advice by the bucket, but take it by the grain.
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I write fiction because it's a way of making statements I can disown.
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"The [London] Times" has published no rumours; it's only reported facts, namely that other, less responsible papers are publishing certain rumours.
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I smoke too much whether it's going well or badly. After all these years, I definitely associate having a pen in my hand with having an ashtray just out of eye line.
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Junk journalism is the evidence of a society that has got at least one thing right, that there should be nobody with the power to dictate where responsible journalism begins.
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The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists.
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Suicide is no more than a trick played on the calendar.
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Happiness is equilibrium. Shift your weight. Equilibrium is pragmatic. You have to get everything into proportion. You compensate, rebalance yourself so that you maintain your angle to your world. When the world shifts, you shift.
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Carnal embrace is sexual congress, which is the insertion of the male genital organ into the female genital organ for purposes of procreation and pleasure. Fermat’s last theorem, by contrast, asserts that when x, y and z are whole numbers each raised to power of n, the sum of the first two can never equal the third when n is greater than 2.
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Since we cannot hope for order, let us withdraw with style from the chaos.
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Having translated two plays by Chekhov, and not speaking Russian myself - I cannot say one sentence. This may shock people... However, I am not shocked, as it is not hard to find out what the words mean.