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Samuel Beckett citations
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Samuel Barclay Beckett, né le 13 avril 1906 à Foxrock et mort le 22 décembre 1989 à Paris, est un écrivain, poète et dramaturge irlandais d'expression principalement française et anglaise, récipiendaire du prix Nobel de littérature en 1969.

Il est l'auteur de romans, tels que Molloy, Malone meurt et L'Innommable et de poésies en prose, mais il est surtout connu pour son œuvre théâtrale. Sa pièce de théâtre la plus célèbre est En attendant Godot, chef-d'œuvre du théâtre de l'absurde. Son œuvre est austère et minimaliste, ce qui est généralement interprété comme l'expression d'un profond pessimisme face à la condition humaine. Ce pessimisme n'exclut cependant pas l'humour, omniprésent chez l'auteur, l'un étant au service de l'autre, pris dans le cadre plus large d'une immense entreprise de dérision.

Avec le temps, il traite ces thèmes dans un style de plus en plus lapidaire, tendant à rendre sa langue de plus en plus concise et sèche. En 1969, il reçoit le prix Nobel de littérature pour « son œuvre, qui à travers un renouvellement des formes du roman et du théâtre, prend son élévation dans la destitution de l'homme moderne ». Wikipedia  

✵ 13. avril 1906 – 22. décembre 1989
Samuel Beckett photo
Samuel Beckett: 128 citations0 J'aime

Samuel Beckett citations célèbres

“Oh le beau jour encore que ça aura été, encore un! (Un temps.) Malgré tout. (Fin de l'expression heureuse.) Jusqu'ici.”

Samuel Beckett Oh les beaux jours

Oh les beaux jours, 1963

“Maximum de simplicité et de symétrie. Lumière aveuglante.”

Samuel Beckett Oh les beaux jours

Description du décor.
Oh les beaux jours, 1963

“Ces Murphy, Molloy, et autres Malone, je n'en suis pas dupe. Ils m'ont fait perdre mon temps […] Ils n'ont pas souffert mes douleurs, leurs douleurs ne sont rien, à côté des miennes, rien qu'une petite partie des miennes, celle dont je croyais pouvoir me détacher, pour la contempler.”

Samuel Beckett livre L'Innommable

L'Innommable, 1953

“Je sentais l’âme qui s’ennuie vite et n’achève jamais rien, qui est de toutes peut-être la moins emmerdante.”

Samuel Beckett livre Premier Amour

Premier Amour, 1946

“Les larmes ruissellent le long de mes joues sans que j'éprouve le besoin de cligner les yeux. Qu'est-ce qui me fait pleurer ainsi? De temps en temps. Il n'y a rien ici qui puisse m'attrister. C'est peut-être de la cervelle liquéfiée.”

Samuel Beckett livre L'Innommable

L'Innommable, 1953

“Ce qui fait le charme de notre pays, à part bien entendu le fait qu’il est peu peuplé, malgré l’impossibilité de s’y procurer le moindre préservatif, c’est que tout y est à l’abandon sauf les vieilles selles de l’histoire.”

Samuel Beckett livre Premier Amour

Premier Amour, 1946

Samuel Beckett: Citations en anglais

“What I assert, deny, question, in the present, I still can. But mostly I shall use the various tenses of the past. For mostly I do not know, it is perhaps no longer so, it is too soon to know, I simply do not know, perhaps shall never know.”

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Samuel Beckett livre Molloy

Molloy (1951)

“God is a witness that cannot be sworn.”

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Samuel Beckett livre Watt

Part I, p. 4
Watt (1943)

“There is a little of everything, apparently, in nature, and freaks are common.”

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Samuel Beckett livre Molloy

Molloy (1951)

“The long blue days, for his head, for his side, and the little paths for his feet, and all the brightness to touch and gather. Through the grass the little mosspaths, bony with old roots, and the trees sticking up, and the flowers sticking up, and the fruit hanging down, and the white exhausted butterflies, and the birds never the same darting all day long into hiding. And all the sounds, meaning nothing. Then at night rest in the quiet house, there are no roads, no streets any more, you lie down by a window opening on refuge, the little sounds come that demand nothing, ordain nothing, explain nothing, propound nothing, and the short necessary night is soon ended, and the sky blue again all over the secret places where nobody ever comes, the secret places never the same, but always simple and indifferent, always mere places, sites of a stirring beyond coming and going, of a being so light and free that it is as the being of nothing.”

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Samuel Beckett livre Watt

Part I, p. 39
Watt (1943)

“Unfathomable mind, now beacon, now sea.”

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Samuel Beckett livre Molloy

Molloy (1951)

“If by Godot I had meant God I would have said God, and not Godot.”

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Samuel Beckett

As quoted in The Essential Samuel Beckett: An Illustrated Biography, by Enoch Brater (revised edition, 2003) ISBN 0-500-28411-3, p. 75

“Hamm: If I could sleep I might make love. I'd go into the woods. My eyes would see … the sky, the earth. I'd run, run, they wouldn't catch me.”

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Samuel Beckett

Endgame (1957)

“I felt ill at ease with all this air about me, lost before the confusion of innumerable prospects.”

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Samuel Beckett

The Expelled (1946)

“How all becomes clear and simple when one opens an eye on the within, having of course previously exposed it to the without, in order to benefit by the contrast.”

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Samuel Beckett livre L'Innommable

The Unnamable (1954)

“I don’t like animals. It’s a strange thing, I don’t like men and I don’t like animals. As for God, he is beginning to disgust me.”

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Samuel Beckett livre Molloy

Molloy (1951)

“My appearance still made people laugh, with that hearty jovial laugh so good for the health.”

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Samuel Beckett

The End (1946)

“Poor juvenile solutions, explaining nothing. No need then for caution, we may reason on to our heart’s content, the fog won’t lift.”

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Samuel Beckett

The Expelled (1946)

“No, life ends and no, there is nothing elsewhere, and no question now of ever finding again that white speck lost in whiteness, to see if they still lie still in the stress of that storm, or of a worse storm, or in the black dark for good, or the great whiteness unchanging, and if not what they are doing.”

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Samuel Beckett livre Imagination Dead Imagine

Imagination Dead Imagine (1965)

“No way in, go in, measure.”

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Samuel Beckett livre Imagination Dead Imagine

Imagination Dead Imagine (1965)

“The short winter’s day was drawing to a close. It seems to me sometimes that these are the only days I have ever known, and especially that most charming moment of all, just before night wipes them out.”

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Samuel Beckett

The Expelled (1946)

“How tell what remains? But it’s the end. Or have I been dreaming, am I dreaming? No no, none of that, for dream is nothing, a joke, and significant what is worse.”

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Samuel Beckett

The Calmative (1946)

“Here's my life, why not, it is one, if you like, if you must, I don't say no, this evening. There has to be one, it seems, once there is speech, no need of a story, a story is not compulsory, just a life, that's the mistake I made, one of the mistakes, to have wanted a story for myself, whereas life alone is enough.”

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Samuel Beckett livre Texts for Nothing

Texts for Nothing (1955)

“Nell: Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.Nagg: Oh?Nell: Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more.”

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Samuel Beckett

Endgame (1957)

“The memory came faint and cold of the story I might have told, a story in the likeness of my life, I mean without the courage to end or the strength to go on.”

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Samuel Beckett

The End (1946)

“Hamm: We're not beginning … to … to … mean something?
Clov: Mean something? You and I mean something?”

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Samuel Beckett

Endgame (1957)

“But he had hardly felt the absurdity of those things, on the one hand, and the necessity of those others, on the other (for it is rare that the feeling of absurdity is not followed by the feeling of necessity), when he felt the absurdity of those things of which he had just felt the necessity (for it is rare that the feeling of necessity is not followed by the feeling of absurdity).”

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Samuel Beckett livre Watt

Part II, p. 133
Watt (1943)

“But is it true love, in the rectum? That’s what bothers me sometimes.”

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Samuel Beckett livre Molloy

Molloy (1951)

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