Variant: Life... is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Source: Macbeth
“Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Source: Macbeth, Act V, scene v.
Context: Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
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William Shakespeare 699
English playwright and poet 1564–1616Related quotes
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"May Day"
Quoted, Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)
Context: Mr. In and Mr. Out are not listed by the census-taker. You will search for them in vain through the social register or the births, marriages, and deaths, or the grocer's credit list. Oblivion has swallowed them and the testimony that they ever existed at all is vague and shadowy, and inadmissible in a court of law. Yet I have it upon the best authority that for a brief space Mr. In and Mr. Out lived, breathed, answered to their names and radiated vivid personalities of their own.
During the brief span of their lives they walked in their native garments down the great highway of a great nation; were laughed at, sworn at, chased, and fled from. Then they passed and were heard of no more.
“The idiot heard the sounds, but they had no meaning for him.”
Source: More Than Human (1953), Chapter 1 “The Fabulous Idiot”, p. 1
Context: The idiot heard the sounds, but they had no meaning for him. He lived inside somewhere, apart, and the little link between word and significance hung broken.
Martin Gardner
(1914–2010) recreational mathematician and philosopher
Introduction to The Annotated Alice (1960) // The Annotated Alice. The Definitive Edition (1999), by Lewis Carroll (Author, Christ Church College, Oxford), John Tenniel (Illustrated by), Martin Gardner (Editor, Introduction and notes by), page viii
Context: The last level of metaphor in the Alice books is this: that life, viewed rationally and without illusion, appears to be a nonsense tale told by an idiot mathematician. At the heart of things science finds only a mad, never-ending quadrille of Mock Turtle Waves and Gryphon Particles. For a moment the waves and particles dance in grotesque, inconceivably complex patterns capable of reflecting on their own absurdity.
Ken Wilber
(1949) American writer and public speaker
"Foreword" to Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion (2000) by Frank Visser
“Kaisers and Czars will strut the stage
Once more with pomp and greed and rage”
Robert Graves
(1895–1985) English poet and novelist
"The Next War".
Fairies and Fusiliers (1917)
Context: Kaisers and Czars will strut the stage
Once more with pomp and greed and rage;
Courtly ministers will stop
At home and fight to the last drop;
By the million men will die
In some new horrible agony...
Helen Reddy
(1941) Australian actress
On her connection to the stage
Freeman interview (September 2012)
Jaco Pastorius
(1951–1987) Musician, producer, educator
On why he played a fretless bass
Modern Electric Bass, Jaco Pastorius (1985)