"My name is Guildenstern, and this is Rosencrantz. confers briefly with him.(Without embarrassment.) I’m sorry—his name’s Guildenstern, and I’m Rosencrantz."

Tom Stoppard Literature See all quotes by Tom Stoppard →

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“What a fine persecution—to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.”

“Words, words. They’re all we have to go on.”

“(an anguished cry): Consistency is all I ask! (low, wry rhetoric): Give us this day our daily mask.”

“All your life you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye, and when something nudges it into outline it is like being ambushed by a grotesque.”

“We’re more of the blood, love and rhetoric school. Well, I’ll leave the choice to you, if there is anything to choose between them. They’re hardly divisible, sir—well, I can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and I can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and I can do you all three concurrent or consecutive, but I can’t do you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory—they’re all blood, you see.”

“Maidens aspiring to godheads— And vice versa—”

Resonant Thoughts

"The best part of being a songwriter — beyond being able to make a living at it — is what I call the "heart payment" of a song. That's when somebody comes up after a concert and says, "My mom was a sin…"

— Paul Williams (songwriter)

Music1940–2013

#time

"hen at Versailles Brockdorff-Rantzau addressed me in the language of the bearer of a challenge, I was forced to realize that the German revolution was mere window-dressing, and that, with the aggresso…"

— Georges Clemenceau

Politics1841–1929

#change

"Without losers, where would the winners be?"

— Casey Stengel

Sports1890–1975

#success

"...nor have I found occasion to depart from the plan... the rejection of the whole doctrine of series in the establishment of the fundamental parts both of the Differential and Integral Calculus. The …"

— Augustus De Morgan

Mathematics1806–1871

#science