Samuel Beckett Quotes

I realize that nothing's as it seems.

I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.

It is not easy to distinguish reality from illusion, especially when one lives in a period of the great upheaval.

Things are not always as they seem.

Life is not always what we think it is.

Did you ever think that maybe what you see isn't really what's true?

You’re here,” I continued. “At least you look as if you’re here. But maybe you aren’t. Maybe it’s just your shadow. The real you may be someplace else. Or maybe you already disappeared, a long, long time ago. I reach out my hand to see, but you’ve hidden yourself behind a cloud of probablys. Do you think we can go on like this forever?

Yet the stupid believe they are awake, busily and brightly assuming they understand things, calling this man ruler, that one herdsman – how dense! Confucius and you are both dreaming! And when I say you are dreaming, I am dreaming, too. Words like these will be labeled the Supreme Swindle.

People in this world look at things mistakenly, and think that what they do not understand must be the void. This is not the true void. It is bewilderment.

We live in a house of mirrors and think we are looking out the windows.

I knew nothing but shadows and I thought them to be real.

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

What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears?

Nothing is wholly obvious without becoming enigmatic. Reality itself is too obvious to be true .

We move from the illusion of certainty, to the certainty of illusion

Things are not at all what they seem to be: oh no, not at all.

Things don't always look as they seem.

All you know is what you think you know, but that isn't always what's real.

Faith, indeed, has up to the present not been able to move real mountains, although I do not know who assumed that it could. But it can put mountains where there are none.

Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.

If you aren't the woman I think you are, then this isn't the world I thought it was.

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

I think the fact that I look totally artificial, but I am totally real, has its own kind of magic in it.

I think there's more real in the unreal than there is in the real.

Scientific truth is always paradox, if judged by everyday experience, which catches only the delusive appearance of things.