I asked her to look at me and after a few moments - (pause) - after a few moments she did, but the eyes just slits, because of the glare I bent over her to get them in the shadow and they opened. (Pause. Low) Let me in.
Samuel BeckettRead
Decidedly it will never have been given to me to finish anything, except perhaps breathing. One must not be greedy.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the struggle with completion and acceptance of one's limitations.
In this quote, Samuel Beckett expresses a sense of resignation regarding the inability to complete tasks or projects, suggesting that the only certainty in life is the act of breathing. He implies that striving for perfection or completion can lead to greed and frustration, and perhaps it is more important to accept the inherent incompleteness in life and focus on the simple acts of existence.
Themes
CompletionResignationLimitationsAcceptanceExistence
In practice
Example use cases
During a philosophical discussion about the nature of life and work, this quote can highlight the acceptance of incompleteness.
More from Samuel Beckett
All quotes βNothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It's awful.
Samuel BeckettRead
I shall state silences more competently than ever a better man spangled the butterflies of vertigo.
Samuel BeckettRead
And what I have, what I am, is enough, was always enough for me, and as far as my dear little sweet little future is concerned I have no qualms, I have a good time coming.
Samuel BeckettRead
I love order. It's my dream. A world where all would be silent and still, and each thing in its last place, under the last dust.
Samuel BeckettRead
We lose our hair, our teeth! Our bloom, our ideals.
Samuel BeckettRead
Similar quotes
In a sense, mass incarceration has emerged as a far more extreme form of physical and residential segregation than Jim Crow segregation. Rather than merely shunting people of color to the other side of town, people are locked in literal cages - en masse.
Michelle AlexanderRead
The Hopi, an Indian tribe, have a language as sophisticated as ours, but no tenses for past, present and future. The division does not exist. What does this say about time? Matter, that thing the most solid and the well-known, which you are holding in your hands and which makes up your body, is now known to be mostly empty space. Empty space and points of light. What does this say about the reality of the world?
Jeanette WintersonRead
If we must not act save on a certainty, we ought not to act on religion, for it is not certain. But how many things we do on an uncertainty, sea voyages, battles!
Blaise PascalRead
Much of spiritual life is self-acceptance, maybe all of it.
Jack KornfieldRead
I'm going to smile, and my smile will sink down into your pupils, and heaven knows what it will become.
Jean-Paul SartreRead
In this world, there must be a certain degree of honor just as there must be a certain amount of light. When there are many men without honor, there will always be some others who bear in themselves the honor of many men.
Jose MartiRead