We need above all to learn again to believe in the possibility of nobility of spirit in ourselves.
—Eugene O’Neill
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!
—Eugene O’Neill
Topics: Aging, Age
Happiness hates the timid.
—Eugene O’Neill
Topics: Happiness
Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
—Eugene O’Neill
Topics: Curiosity
When men make gods, there is no God!
—Eugene O’Neill
Topics: God
One should be either sad or joyful. Contentment is a warm sty for eaters and sleepers.
—Eugene O’Neill
Topics: Contentment, Happiness
For a moment I lost myself, actually lost my life. I was set free! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life . . . to life itself. I caught a glimpse of something greater than myself.
—Eugene O’Neill
Topics: Stars
The only living life is in the past and future—the present is an interlude—strange interlude in which we call on past and future to bear witness that we are living.
—Eugene O’Neill
Topics: Peculiarity, The Present, Oddity
Happiness hates the timid! So does science!
—Eugene O’Neill
Obsessed by a fairy tale, we spend our lives searching for a magic door and a lost kingdom of peace.
—Eugene O’Neill
Life is a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.
—Eugene O’Neill
Topics: Life and Living
Man’s loneliness is but his fear of life.
—Eugene O’Neill
Topics: Loneliness
What beastly incidents our memories insist on cherishing, the ugly, and the disgusting; the beautiful things we have to keep diaries to remember.
—Eugene O’Neill
Topics: Memory
There is no present or future, only the past, happening over and over again, now.
—Eugene O’Neill
Topics: The Present, Future
I lay on the bowsprit, with the water foaming into spume under me, the masts with every sail white in the moonlight towering above me. I became drunk with the beauty and singing rhythm of it, and for a moment lost myself- actually lost my life. I was set free… dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm and the high dim-starred sky… I belonged within a unity and joy to life itself.
—Eugene O’Neill
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Raymond Chandler American Novelist
- Edward Albee American Playwright
- Neil Simon American Playwright
- William Saroyan American Playwright, Novelist
- Tim Robbins American Actor, Director
- Arthur Miller American Playwright
- Maurice Maeterlinck Belgian Dramatist
- Harold Pinter British Playwright
- Irving Berlin American Composer
- Robert Anton Wilson American Polymath
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