51 Quotes & Sayings By Arthur Miller

When it is recalled that until the Christian era the underworld was never regardded as a hostile area, that all gods were useful and essentially friendly to man despite occasional lapsesl when we see the steady methodical inculcation into humanity of the idea of man's worthlesseness - until redeemed - the necessity of the Devil may become evident as a weapon, a weapon designed and used time and time again in every age to whip men into a surrender to a particular church or church state. Arthur Miller

What victory would the Devil have to win a soul already bad? It is the best the Devil wants, and who is better than the minister." - Rev. John Hale Arthur Miller

HALE, with a tasty love of intellectual pursuit Arthur Miller

I don't know what the hell I'm workin' for. Sometimes I sit in my apartment—all alone. And I think of the rent I'm paying. And it's crazy. But then, it's what I always wanted. My own apartment, a car, and plenty of women. And still, goddammit, I'm lonely. Arthur Miller

A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself. Arthur Miller

Now, as the weeks passed, there was a future, there was a trouble that would not go away. Arthur Miller

Proctor: I am only wondering how I may prove what she told me, Elizabeth. If the girl's a saint now, I think it is not easy to prove she's fraud, and the town gone so silly. She told it to me in a room alone- I have no proof for it. Elizabeth: You were alone wit Arthur Miller

Will you let me go for Christ's sake? Will you take that phony dream and burn it before something happens? Arthur Miller

A small man can be just as exhausted as a great man. Arthur Miller

Chris: I don't know why it is, but every time I reach out for something I want, I have to pull back because other people will suffer. Arthur Miller

I'm losing weight, you notice, Pop? Arthur Miller

The enemy is within, and within stays within, and we can’t get out of within. Arthur Miller

[W]e conceive the Devil as a necessary part of a respectable view of cosmology. Ours is a divided empire in which certain ideas and emotions and actions are of God, and their opposites are of Lucifer. It is as impossible for most men to conceive of a morality without sin as of an earth without 'sky'. Since 1692 a great but superficial change has wiped out God's beard and the Devil's horns, but the world is still gripped between two diametrically opposed absolutes. The concept of unity, in which positive and negative are attributes of the same force, in which good and evil are relative, ever-changing, and always joined to the same phenomenon - such a concept is still reserved to the physical sciences and to the few who have grasped the history of ideas. Arthur Miller

To admit what you see endangers principles. Arthur Miller

...he'll come back. We all come back, kate. These private little revolutions always die. The compromise is always made. In a peculiar way. Frank is right-- every man does have a star. The star of one's honesty. And you spend your life groping for it, but once it's out it never lights again. I don't think he went very far. He probably just wanted to be alone to watch his star go out. Arthur Miller

When the law is wrong it's because it's unnatural, but in this case it is natural and a river will drown you if you buck it now Arthur Miller

Oh, there were many here who were justly shot by unjust men. Arthur Miller

Work a lifetime to pay off a house. you finally own it, and there's nobody to live in it. Arthur Miller

I made a gift for you, Good Proctor. I had to sit long hours in a chair, and passed the time with sewing." - Mary Warren Arthur Miller

I look for John Proctor that took me from my sleep and put knowledge in my heart! I never knew what pretence Salem was, I never knew the lying lessons I was taught by all these Christian women and their covenanted men! And now you bid me tear the light out of my eyes! I will not, I cannot! You loved me, John Proctor, and whatever sin it is, you love me yet! Arthur Miller

Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets. Arthur Miller

Great drama is great questions or it is nothing but technique. I could not imagine a theater worth my time that did not want to change the world. Arthur Miller

I know what's wrong with me - I could never stand still for death! Which you've got to do by a certain age, or be ridiculous - you've got to stand there nobly and serene, and let death run his tape on your arms and around your belly and up your crotch until he's got you fitted for that black suit. And I can't, I won't! .. So I'm left with wrestling with this anachronistic energy which God has charged me with and I will use it till the dirt is shoveled in my mouth! Life! Life! Fuck death and dying! . Arthur Miller

Do I raise the dead when I put him behind bars? Then what'll I do it for? We used to shoot a man who acted like a dog, but honor was real there, you were protecting something. But here? This is the land of the great big dogs, you don't love a man here, you eat him! Arthur Miller

The only thing you've got in this world is what you can sell. Arthur Miller

A character is defined by the kinds of challenges he cannot walk away from. Arthur Miller

Here is all the invisible world, caught, defined, and calculated. In these books the Devil stands stripped of all his brute disguises. Here are all your familiar spirits-your incubi and succubi; your witches that go by land, by air, and by sea; your wizards of the night and of the day. Have no fear now-we shall find him out and I mean to crush him utterly if he has shown his face! Arthur Miller

Mother: What more can we be? Chris: You can be better! Once and for all you can know there's a universe of people outside and you're responsible to it, and unless you know that you threw away your son because that's how he died. Arthur Miller

An era can be considered over when its basic illusions have been exhausted. Arthur Miller

Fear, like love, is difficult to explain after it has subsided, probably because it draws away the veils of illusion as it disappears. Arthur Miller

The train resembles the Soviet type and is quite comfortable, but all socialist structures I have ever encountered have toilets stemming from a single model engineered by the Orthodox Church in Tsarist Russia to ensure that man never be allowed to forget the corruption of the flesh. Arthur Miller

I know you're no worse than most men but I thought you were better. I never saw you as a man. I saw you as my father. Arthur Miller

Pray calm yourselves. I have eleven children, and I am twenty-six times a grandma, and I have seen them all through their silly seasons, and when it come on them they will run the Devil bowlegged keeping up with their mischief. I think she'll wake when she tires of it. A child's spirit is like a child, you can never catch it by running after it; you must stand still, and, for love, it will soon itself come back. . Arthur Miller

The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds come home to roost. Arthur Miller

The task of the real intellectual consists of analyzing illusions in order to discover their causes. Arthur Miller

A good newspaper is a nation talking to itself. Arthur Miller

The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost. Arthur Miller

The word "now" is like a bomb thrown through the window and it ticks. Arthur Miller

You never do any good until you get into some trouble. Arthur Miller

I think it's a mistake to ever look for hope outside of one's self. Arthur Miller

Can anyone remember love? It's like trying to summon up the smell of roses in a cellar. You might see a rose, but never the perfume. Arthur Miller

The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less. Arthur Miller

The problem was to sustain at any cost the feeling you had in the theater that you were watching a real person, yes, but an intense condensation of his experience, not simply a realistic series of episodes. Arthur Miller

Without alienation, there can be no politics. Arthur Miller

Everybody likes a kidder, but nobody lends him money. Arthur Miller