“All this business of a labour to accomplish, before I can end, of words to say, a truth to recover, in order to say it, before I can end, of an imposed task, once known, long neglected, finally forgotten, to perform, before I can be done with speaking, done with listening, I invented it all, in the hope it would console me, help me to go on, allow me to think of myself as somewhere on a road, moving, between a beginning and an end, gaining ground, losing ground, getting lost, but somehow in the long run making headway.”
The Unnamable (1954)
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Samuel Beckett 122
Irish novelist, playwright, and poet 1906–1989Related quotes

Used in "Great Souls at Prayer", Edited by Mary W. Tileson, Pubished by J. Bowden, London 1898
Prayers

“Let me die in my footsteps before I go under the ground.”
Song lyrics, The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991 (1991), Let Me Die In My Footsteps (recorded 1962)

Last statement to the House of Commons as Prime Minister, ending by paraphrasing his 2005 comment to Tony Blair, "he was the future once" (July 13, 2016), see Hansard https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2016-07-13/debates/4A1B874C-54B5-4BEF-8D79-AFA264A78068/Engagements#contribution-E7A04179-9154-4077-87DF-1642C1BD3B4D
2010s, 2016

“Everything has to end before it can begin.”
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

Address to the AFL Convention in New York City, transcribed in the New York Times, September 23, 1952. In context, Stevenson was saying that the Republicans were humorless, in contrast to his own sense of humor. This quote resembles the unsourced and confusing version, "I refuse to personally criticize President Eisenhower, I will not submit to the Republican concept of gravity."
“Before I begin speaking, there is something I would like to say”
Attributed to Saul Gorn in: John G. Gammack et al. (2011) The Book of Informatics. p. 5

Quote in a letter to his wife Sophie Küppers (February 1926):' (letter 8-2-1926, Lissitzky-Küppers), Archive van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 1990
1926 - 1941