Eugene O'Neill Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of Eugene O'Neill's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Playwright Eugene O'Neill's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 69 quotes on this page collected since October 16, 1888! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
  • Man's loneliness is but his fear of life.

    1927 Lazarus. Lazarus Laughed, act 3, sc.2.
  • Life is perhaps best regarded as a bad dream between two awakenings.

    Margaret Loftus Ranald, Eugene O'Neill (1984). “The Eugene O'Neill Companion”, Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press
  • Dogs...do not ruin their sleep worrying about how to keep the objects they have, and to obtain the objects they have not. There is nothing of value they have to bequeath except their love and their faith.

  • None of us can help the things life has done to us. They’re done before you realize it, and once they’re done they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you’d like to be, and you’ve lost your true self forever.

    Travis Bogard, Eugene O'Neill (1988). “Contour in Time: The Plays of Eugene O'Neill”, p.434, Oxford University Press on Demand
  • Age's terms of peace, after the long interlude of war with life, have still to be concluded-Youth must keep decently away-so many old wounds may have to be unbound, and old scars pointed to with pride, to prove to ourselves we have been brave and noble.

    Eugene O'Neill (1995). “Three Plays”, Vintage
  • Two days ago we waded through the mud out to this grave beneath the pines at the foot of the hill to place a Christmas wreath on it, hoping he would look down from the Paradise of Ten Billion Trees and Unrationable Dog Biscuits and pity us.

  • Happiness hates the timid. So does science.

    Eugene O'Neill (1995). “Three Plays”, Vintage
  • You seem to be going in for sincerity today. It isn't becoming to you, really — except as an obvious pose. Be as artificial as you are, I advise. There's a sort of sincerity in that, you know. And, after all, you must confess you like that better.

    Eugene O'Neill (2014). “The Hairy Ape”, p.20, The Floating Press
  • I will be an artist or nothing!

    Eugene O'Neill, Travis Bogard, Jackson R. Bryer (1988). “Selected Letters of Eugene O'Neill”, p.36, Yale University Press
  • A man's work is in danger of deteriorating when he thinks he has found the one best formula for doing it. If he thinks that, he is likely to feel that all he needs is merely to go on repeating himself . . . so long as a person is searching for better ways of doing his work, he is fairly safe.

    Eugene O'Neill, Mark W. Estrin (1990). “Conversations with Eugene O'Neill”, p.36, Univ. Press of Mississippi
  • Why can’t you remember your Shakespeare and forget the third-raters. You’ll find what you’re trying to say in him- as you’ll find everything else worth saying. 'We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with sleep.'' - 'Fine! That’s beautiful. But I wasn’t trying to say that. We are such stuff as manure is made on, so let’s drink up and forget it. That’s more my idea.

  • Like a saint's vision of beatitude. Like the veil of things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second you see—and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second there is meaning! Then the hand lets the veil fall and you are alone, lost in the fog again, and you stumble on toward nowhere, for no good reason!

    Eugene O'Neill, Harold Bloom (2009). “Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night”, p.79, Infobase Publishing
  • We need above all to learn again to believe in the possibility of nobility of spirit in ourselves.

    Eugene O'Neill (1988). “Complete Plays: 1932-1943”
  • The devil! what beastly things our memories insist on cherishing!

    1928 Marsden. Strange Interlude, pt.1, act 2.
  • There is no present or future-only the past, happening over and over again-now.

    Time   Memories   Future  
    Bhagwat S. Goyal, Eugene O'Neill (1975). “The Strategy of Survival: Human Significance of O'Neill's Plays”, Ghaziabad : Vimal Prakashan
  • Dey's some things I don't got to be told. I kin read them in folks' eyes.

  • I hate doctors! They'll do anything... to keep you coming to them. They'll sell their souls. What's worse, they'll sell yours, and you never know it till one day you find yourself in hell.

  • Obsessed by a fairy tale, we spend our lives searching for a magic door and a lost kingdom of peace.

    Eugene O'Neill (1988). “More Stately Mansions: The Unexpurgated Edition”, p.281, Oxford University Press
  • If a person is to get the meaning of life he must learn to like the facts about himself -- ugly as they may seem to his sentimental vanity -- before he can learn the truth behind the facts. And the truth is never ugly.

    Eugene O'Neill, Mark W. Estrin (1990). “Conversations with Eugene O'Neill”, p.37, Univ. Press of Mississippi
  • Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.

  • Curiosity killed the cat.

  • The sea hates a coward.

    'Mourning becomes Electra' (1931) pt. 2, act 4
  • The child was diseased at birth, stricken with a hereditary ill that only the most vital men are able to shake off. I mean poverty-the most deadly and prevalent of all diseases.

    Travis Bogard, Eugene O'Neill (1988). “Contour in Time: The Plays of Eugene O'Neill”, p.28, Oxford University Press on Demand
  • Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will. But be drunken.

    Eugene O'Neill, Harold Bloom (2009). “Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night”, p.174, Infobase Publishing
  • It's a great game - the pursuit of happiness.

    Eugene O'Neill (1988). “Complete Plays: 1932-1943”
  • What's the use coming home to get the blues over what can't be helped.

    Eugene O'Neill, Harold Bloom (2009). “Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night”, p.80, Infobase Publishing
  • We are where centuries only count as seconds, and after a thousand lives, our eyes begin to open.

    Eugene O'Neill (1951). “Plays: "Anna Christie." Beyond the horizon. The Emperor Jones. The hairy ape. The great god Brown. The straw. Dynamo. Days without end. The iceman cometh”
  • When you're 50 you start thinking about things you haven't thought about before. I used to think getting old was about vanity - but actually it's about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial.

  • The old - like children - talk to themselves, for they have reached that hopeless wisdom of experience which knows that though one were to cry it in the streets to multitudes, or whisper it in the kiss to one's beloved, the only ears that can ever hear one's secrets are one's own!

    1927 Tiberius. Lazarus Laughed, act 4, sc.1.
  • Why am I afraid to dance, I who love music and rhythm and grace and song and laughter? Why am I afraid to live, I who love life and the beauty of flesh and the living colors of the earth and sky and sea? Why am I afraid to love, I who love love?

    Travis Bogard, Eugene O'Neill (1988). “Contour in Time: The Plays of Eugene O'Neill”, p.271, Oxford University Press on Demand
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  • We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 69 quotes from the Playwright Eugene O'Neill, starting from October 16, 1888! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!
    Eugene O'Neill quotes about: Age Dogs Dreams Funny Giving Hate Life Lying Memories Past Sleep Writing