Samuel Beckett Quotes

Like the physical, the psychical is not necessarily in reality what it appears to us to be.

You want the truth, of course. You want me to put two and two together. But two and two doesn’t necessarily get you the truth. Two and two equals a voice outside the window. Two and two equals the wind. The living bird is not its labeled bones.

Photography deals exquisitely with appearances, but nothing is what it appears to be.

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

The focus of subjectivity is a distorting mirror.

What, then is truth?... Truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are.

The truth is a fog, in which one man sees the heavenly host and the other one sees a flying elephant.

Things are not what they appear to be: nor are they otherwise.

Even if a man should chance to speak the most complete truth, yet he himself does not know it; all things are wrapped in appearances

You are to draw not reality, but the appearance of reality!

Truth and dreams are always getting muddled.

Nothing is as good as it seems and nothing is as bad, but somewhere between reality falls.

Between the two poles of whole-truth and half-truth is slung the chancy hammock in which we all rock.

What is true by lamplight is not always true by sunlight.

This world may be only illusion -- but it's the only illusion we've got.

In Shakespeare's world, characters cannot trust their senses. Is the ghost in Hamlet true and truthful, or is it a demon, tempting young Hamlet into murderous sin? Is Juliet dead or merely sleeping? Does Lear really stand at the edge of a great cliff? Or has the Fool deceived him to save his life?

Whatever you say it is, it isn't.

I realize that nothing's as it seems.

Reality seems so simple. We just open our eyes and there it is. But that doesn't mean it is simple.

Truth is always a delusion.

Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It's certainty.

From a distance it is something; and nearby it is nothing.

Truth: An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance …

Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing. It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different.

I often tend to think that things are not what they seem.