Samuel Beckett Quotes

But the real, tremendous truth is this: suffering serves no purpose whatever.

We know that our life is essentially tragic. I'm absolutely not for handing over that very important department of our psyche to those who say, "Why didn't you say so before? God has a plan for you in mind."

Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.

The lot of man is to suffer and die.What's gone is of no consequence.

There is nothing alive more agonized than man / of all that breathe and crawl across the earth.

Martin in particular concluded that man was born to live either in the convulsions of misery, or in the lethargy of boredom.

The first and foremost reality is that suffering and death are not only enemies of life, but a means of reminding us of life's twin realities, love and hate.

It is the lot of man to suffer.

Aren't all these notes the senseless writings of a man who won't accept the fact that there is nothing we can do with suffering except to suffer it?

Suffering must be the inevitable tariff exacted from spirit for residing in human form.

Let's face it: our lives are miserable, laborious, and short.

Man alone suffers so excruciatingly in the world that he was compelled to invent laughter.

Art is one of the means whereby man seeks to redeem a life which is experienced as chaotic, senseless, and largely evil.

We mortals with immortal minds are only born for sufferings and joys, and one could almost say that the most excellent receive joy through sufferings.

What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the victims of nature, it is that they are conscious of it.

To suffer and to endure is the lot of humanity.

Maybe we cannot escape from the destiny of the human, but we have a choice: to suffer our destiny or to enjoy our destiny.

If suffering were an unavoidable part of our existence, we should try to alleviate it as far as possible in practical, earthly ways.

The two real problems in life are boredom and death.

A writer or any suffering artist-to-be is just an instrument too finely set to the human condition [...]

What else are our lives but a story we tell ourselves to find some sense in the pain ofliving?

I think we all try to figure out ways to ignore the fact that life is about suffering. In the modern world, that's what we're surrounded with. We have all these little tools, such as phones and the Internet, to help us forget about suffering. Whenever you are tired, you don't have to really sit in the abyss of what it means to be alive. We always find ways to avoid it. When a ship sinks, you are sitting in it. There is no way to avoid.

I wrote the song "Show Me" as a prayer to God asking simple, honest questions about life and death and why there is so much suffering in the world. As I grew with the song I realized I shouldn't limit these questions solely to God; I should ask those questions of others and of myself.

Man is so great that his greatness appears even in the consciousness of his misery. A tree does not know itself to be miserable. It is true that it is misery indeed to know one's self to be miserable; but then it is greatness also. In this way, all man's miseries go to prove his greatness. They are the miseries of a mighty potentate, of a dethroned monarch.

To put it another way, pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world. Why must it be pain? Why can't he rouse us more gently, with violins or laughter? Because the dream from which we must be wakened, is the dream that all is well.