Tom Stoppard: Trending quotes (page 5)

“I will take his secret to the grave, telling people along the way. Betrayal is no sin if it is whimsical.”

Tom Stoppard The Invention of Love

Housman, Act I
The Invention of Love (1997)

People , Secret , Way , Betrayal

“I know the British press is very attached to the lobby system. It lets the journalists and the politicians feel proud of their traditional freedoms while giving the reader as much of the truth as they think is good for him.”

Tom Stoppard Night and Day

Mageeba, Act II
Night and Day (1978)

Truth , Feeling , Thinking , Freedom

“Chater: You insulted my wife in the gazebo yesterday evening!
Septimus: You are mistaken. I made love to your wife in the gazebo. She asked me to meet her there, I have her note somewhere, I dare say I could find it for you, and if someone is putting it about that I did not turn up, by God, sir, it is a slander.”

Tom Stoppard Arcadia

Act I
Arcadia (1993)

Love , God

“It is better of course to know useless things than to know nothing.”

Tom Stoppard

Misattributed
Source: Seneca, Epistle 88, as seen in the following: "You may sweep all these theories in with the superfluous troops of 'liberal' studies; the one class of men give me a knowledge that will be of no use to me, the other class do away with any hope of attaining knowledge. It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing. One set of philosophers offers no light by which I may direct my gaze toward the truth; the other digs out my very eyes and leaves me blind." Seneca: Epistle 88 http://www.stoics.com/seneca_epistles_book_2.html#%E2%80%98LXXXVIII1

“I'm showing an interest in your work. I thought you liked me showing an interest in your work. My showing. Save the gerund and screw the whale.”

Tom Stoppard The Real Thing

Max, Act I, scene I
The Real Thing (1982)

“Michael: "March here, march there, present arms, where's your cap?" — you've no idea, the whole Army's obsessed with playing at soldiers.”

Tom Stoppard

The Coast of Utopia: Voyage (2002)

Idea

“Their coarseness is the sinew of some kind of brute confidence which is the reason England is home to every shade of political exile. They don't give asylum out of respect for asylum-seekers, but out of respect for themselves. They invented personal liberty, and they know it, and they did it without having any theories about it. They value liberty because it's liberty.”

Tom Stoppard

Herzen
The Coast of Utopia: Salvage (2002)

Home , Confidence , Personality

“How the hell do I know what I find incredible? Credibility is an expanding field… Sheer disbelief hardly registers on the face before the head is nodding with all the wisdom of instant hindsight.”

Tom Stoppard Jumpers

George, Act I
Jumpers (1972)

Wisdom , Hell

“Miss Frobisher smiles, with little cause that I know of. If Jesus of Nazareth had had before him the example of Miss Frobisher getting through the Latin degree papers of the London University Examinations Board he wouldn’t have had to fall back on camels and the eyes of needles, and Miss Frobisher’s name would be a delightful surprise to encounter in Matthew, Chapter 19; as would, even more surprisingly, the London University Examinations Board. Your name is not Miss Frobisher? What is your name? Miss Burton. I’m very sorry. I stand corrected. If Jesus of Nazareth had had before him the example of Miss Burton getting through the… Oh, dear, I hope it is not I who have made you cry.”

Tom Stoppard The Invention of Love

Housman, Act I.
The Invention of Love (1997)

Smile , Hope , Universe , Cry

“Alexander: How the world must have been changing while I was holding it still. tnt in love.”

Tom Stoppard

The Coast of Utopia: Voyage (2002)

Love , World , Change

“Beauty is desired in order that it may be befouled; not for its own sake, but for the joy brought by the certainty of profaning it.”

Tom Stoppard

Elle est désirée pour la salir. Non pour elle-même, mais pour la joie goûtée dans la certitude de la profaner.
Misattributed
Source: Georges Bataille, Erotism (1962) [City Lights Books, 1991, trans. Mary Dalwood, ISBN 0872861902], part I, ch. XIII, p. 144.

Beauty , Joy

“The days of the digitals are numbered. The metaphor is built into them like a self-destruct mechanism.”

Tom Stoppard The Real Thing

Max, Act I, scene I.
Often misquoted as "The days of the digital watch are numbered."
The Real Thing (1982)

“This thing here, which looks like a wooden club, is actually several pieces of particular wood cunningly put together in a certain way so that the whole thing is sprung, like a dance floor. It's for hitting cricket balls with. If you get it right, the cricket ball will travel two hundred yards in four seconds, and all you've done is give it a knock like knocking the top off a bottle of stout, and it makes a noise like a trout taking a fly. What we're trying to do is to write cricket bats, so that when we throw up an idea and give it a little knock, it might…travel.”

Tom Stoppard The Real Thing

Henry, Act II, scene V
The Real Thing (1982)

Way , Travel , Idea , Dance

“It seems pointless to be quoted if one isn't going to be quotable … it's better to be quotable than honest.”

Tom Stoppard

Interview http://books.google.com/books?id=PubwLmgAcd0C&q="It+seems+pointless+to+be+quoted+if+one+isn't+going+to+be+quotable"+"it's+better+to+be+quotable+than+honest"&pg=PA49#v=onepage with Janet Watts that appeared in The Guardian newspaper 21 March 1973.

Quotes

“Language is a finite instrument crudely applied to an infinity of ideas, and one consequence of the failure to take account of this is that modern philosophy has made itself ridiculous by analysing such statements as, "This is a good bacon sandwich," or, "Bedser had a good wicket."”

Tom Stoppard Jumpers

Source: George, Act II. Jumpers (1972)

Idea , Failure

“To be an artist at all is like living in Switzerland during a world war. To be an artist in Zurich, in 1917, implies a degree of self-absorption that would have glazed over the eyes of Narcissus.”

Tom Stoppard Travesties

Carr, Act I
Travesties (1974)

War , World

“Most men give advice by the bucket, but take it by the grain.”

Tom Stoppard

Misattributed
Source: William R(ounseville) Alger, American clergyman and writer [1822-1905]; reported in Raphael Lewin, Ed., The New Era (1872), Volume 2, p. 315.

Men

“When I was at school, on certain afternoons we all had to do what was called Labour — weeding, sweeping, sawing logs for the boiler-room, that sort of thing; but if you had a chit from Matron you were let off to spend the afternoon messing about in the Art Room. Labour or Art. And you've got a chit for life? Where did you get it? What is an artist? For every thousand people there's nine hundred doing the work, ninety doing well, nine doing good, and one lucky bastard who's the artist.”

Tom Stoppard Travesties

Carr, Act I
Travesties (1974)

Life , People , School , Art

“When someone disagrees with you on a moral point you assume that he is one step behind in his thinking, and he assumes that he has gone one step ahead. But I take both parts, O'Hara, leapfrogging myself along the great moral issues, refuting myself and rebutting the refutation towards a truth that must be the compound of two opposite half-truths. And you never reach it because there is always something more to say.”

Tom Stoppard

Source: Lord Malquist and Mr Moon (1966), Ch. 2: A Couple of Deaths and Exits.

Truth , Thinking , Parting

“There is presumably a calendar date — a moment — when the onus of proof passed from the atheist to the believer, when, quite suddenly, secretly, the noes had it.”

Tom Stoppard Jumpers

George, Act I
Jumpers (1972)