What a fine persecution—to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened. Tom Stoppard More Quotes by Tom Stoppard More Quotes From Tom Stoppard Rosencrantz: I don't believe in it anyway. Guildenstern: What? Rosencrantz: England. Guildenstern: Just a conspiracy of cartographers, then? Tom Stoppard conspiracyenglandbelieve It makes me so happy. To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing.... A door like this has cracked open five or six times since we got up on our hind legs. It's the best possible time of being alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong. Tom Stoppard aliveknowingdoors I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail, while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen. Tom Stoppard oxygenartistwriting They loved, and quarreled, and made up, and loved, and fought, and were true to each other and untrue. She made him the happiest man in the whole world and the most wretched, and after a few years she died, and then, when he was thirty, he died, too. But by that time Catullus had invented the love poem. Tom Stoppard menworldyears Poetical feelings are a peril to scholarship. There are always poetical people ready to protest that a corrupt line is exquisite. Exquisite to whom? The Romans were foreigners writing for foreigners two millenniums ago; and for people whose gods we find quaint, whose savagery we abominate, whose private habits we don't like to talk about, but whose idea of what is exquisite is, we flatter ourselves, mysteriously identical to ours. Tom Stoppard writingtwoideas A scholar's business is to add to what is known. That is all. But it is capable of giving the very greatest satisfaction, because knowledge is good. It does not have to look good or even sound good or even do good. It is good just by being knowledge. And the only thing that makes it knowledge is that it is true. You can't have too much of it and there is no little too little to be worth having. There is truth and falsehood in a comma. Tom Stoppard sounddoegiving Fantasy flows in where fact leaves a vacuum. Tom Stoppard vacuumsflowwriting Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light. Tom Stoppard rocketsfallenlight What are a friend's books for if not to be borrowed? Tom Stoppard borrowedifsbook The colours red, blue and green are real. The colour yellow is a mystical experience shared by everybody. Tom Stoppard mystical-experiencesrealblue ...Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that what is taken to be true. It's the currency if living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions. What do you assume? Tom Stoppard differencestakenlong Player: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life question your sitution at every turn. Tom Stoppard relaxplayerpeople I will take his secret to the grave, telling people I meet on the way. Tom Stoppard secretpeopleway Each move is dictated by the previous one--that is the meaning of order Tom Stoppard rosencrantz-and-guildensternordermoving The truth is, we value your company, for want of any other. We have been left so much to our own devices—after a while one welcomes the uncertainty of being left to other people's. Tom Stoppard truth-iswantpeople If knowledge isn't self-knowledge it isn't doing much, mate. Is the universe expanding? Is it contracting? Is it standing on one leg and singing 'When Father Painted the Parlour'? Leave me out. I can expand my universe without you. 'She walks into beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies, and all that's best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes. Tom Stoppard eyedarkfather It takes character to withstand the rigours of indolence. Tom Stoppard indolencerigourcharacter I would join Sisyphus in Hades and gladly push my boulder up the slope if only, each time it rolled back down, I were given a line of Aeschylus. Tom Stoppard bouldersgivenlines I should have the courage of my lack of convictions. Tom Stoppard convictionshouldshould-have The whole philosophy of modern times is to dissolve distinctions between individuals and deal with them as large collections of people. It's essentially self-interested on the part of authority. Tom Stoppard selfphilosophypeople
