Tennessee Williams Quotes

The vulnerability of precious things is beautiful because vulnerability is a mark of existence. The destruction of Troy. The fall of the petals from fruit trees in blossom. To know that what is most precious is not rooted in existence - that is beautiful.

Everyone is fragile. Everything beautiful is fragile

You're beautiful, like a May fly.

I'm afraid to speak or move for fear that all this wonderful beauty will just vanish... like a broken silence.

if only these treasures were not so fragile as they are precious and beautiful.

I think, that if I touched the earth, It would crumble; It is so sad and beautiful, So tremulously like a dream.

Snapshots, moments, mere seconds: as fragile and beautiful and hopeless as a single butterfly, flapping on against a gathering wind.

Treaties are like roses and young girls. They last while they last.

Happiness, for you we walk on a knife edge. To the eyes you are a flickering light, to the feet, thin ice that cracks; and so may no one touch you who loves you.

It takes a long time to make me beautiful, but it goes fast to make me ugly.

Beauty is a fragile gift.

Everything, no matter how beautiful, is only with us for awhile.

Sunsets, like childhood, are viewed with wonder not just because they are beautiful but because they are fleeting.

Look round and round upon this bare bleak plain, and see even here, upon a winter's day, how beautiful the shadows are! Alas! It is the nature of their kind to be so. The loveliest things in life... are but shadows; and they come and go, and change and fade away, as rapidly as these.

It is all a question of sensitiveness. Brute force and overbearing may make a terrific effect. But in the end, that which lives by delicate sensitiveness. If it were a question of brute force, not a single human baby would survive for a fortnight. It is the grass of the field, most frail of all things, that supports all life all the time. But for the green grass, no empire would rise, no man would eat bread: for grain is grass; and Hercules or Napoleon or Henry Ford would alike be denied existence.

What do we have in common with the rosebud, which trembles because a drop of dew lies on its body?

Life is a toy made of glass; it appears to be of inestimable price, but in reality it is very cheap.

When you've been really beaten, you realize that you are just an envelope of skin, an easily penetrated envelope that holds together a lot of fluids and some rigid structures, which in their turn can simply be broken and invaded.

The fading light is us, and we are, for a moment so brief (...) beautiful.

Glass breaks so easily. No matter how careful you are.

Men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, and clever.

Beautiful things grow to a certain height and then they fail and fade off, breathing out memories as they decay.

All merely graceful attributes are usually the most evanescent.

Stars and blossoming fruit-trees: utter permanence and extreme fragility give an equal sense of eternity.

These flowers will be rotten in a couple hours. Birds will crap on them. The smoke here will make them stink, and tomorrow a bulldozer will probably run over them, but for right now they are so beautiful.