31 Quotes & Sayings By Eugene Oneill

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was born in a small town outside of Hartford, Connecticut, and grew up in what was then the North End of Boston. After attending Fordham University and joining the Provincetown Players, O'Neill became known as a playwright. He is best remembered for his plays Long Day's Journey Into Night (1956) and A Moon for the Misbegotten (1957). His other plays include: Anna Christie (1921), The Iceman Cometh (1940), Desire Under the Elms (1941), Strange Interlude (1943), A Touch of the Poet (1944), The Long Voyage Home (1935) and Hughie (1963).

Happy roads is bunk. Weary roads is right. Get you...
1
Happy roads is bunk. Weary roads is right. Get you nowhere fast. That's where I've got–nowhere. Where everyone lands in the end, even if most of the suckers won't admit it. Eugene ONeill
There is no present or future-only the past, happening over...
3
There is no present or future-only the past, happening over and over again-now. Eugene ONeill
Censorship of anything, at any time, in any place, on...
4
Censorship of anything, at any time, in any place, on whatever pretense, has always been and always will be the last resort of the boob and the bigot. Eugene ONeill
5
Why am I afraid to live, I who love life and the beauty of flesh and the living colors of earth and sky and sea? Why am I afraid of love, I who love love?.. Why was I born without a skin, O God, that I must wear armor in order to touch or to be touched? Eugene ONeill
6
Then in the spring something happened to me. Yes, I remember. I fell in love with James Tyrone and was so happy for time. Eugene ONeill
7
The fog was where I wanted to be. Halfway down the path you can’t see this house. You’d never know it was here. Or any of the other places down the avenue. I couldn’t see but a few feet ahead. I didn’t meet a soul. Everything looked and sounded unreal. Nothing was what it is. That’s what I wanted–to be alone with myself in another world where truth is untrue and life can hide from itself. Out beyond the harbor, where the road runs along the beach, I even lost the feeling of being on land. The fog and the sea seemed part of each other. It was like walking on the bottom of the sea. As if I had drowned long ago. As if I was the ghost belonging to the fog, and the fog was the ghost of the sea. It felt damned peaceful to be nothing more than a ghost within a ghost. Eugene ONeill
8
I am so far from being a pessimist...on the contrary, in spite of my scars, I am tickled to death at life. Eugene ONeill
9
He thinks money spent on a home is money wasted. He's lived too much in hotels. Never the best hotels, of course. Second-rate hotels. He doesn't understand a home. He doesn't feel at home in it. And yet, he wants a home. He's even proud of having this shabby place. He loves it here. Eugene ONeill
10
Dey's some things I don't got to be told. I kin read them in folks' eyes. Eugene ONeill
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You're worse than decent. You're virtuous. Eugene ONeill
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You can't be too careful about work. It's the most dangerous habit known to medical science. Eugene ONeill
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If dat ghost have money, I tells him never to haunt you less'n he wants to lose it! Eugene ONeill
14
The Mad Scene. Enter Ophelia! Eugene ONeill
15
Stay passed out, that's the right dope. There ain't any cool willow trees- except you grow your own in a bottle. Eugene ONeill
16
LARRY--(with increasing bitter intensity, more as if he were fighting with himself than with Hickey) I'm afraid to live, am I?--and even more afraid to die! So I sit here, with my pride drowned on the bottom of a bottle, keeping drunk so I won't see myself shaking in my britches with fright, or hear myself whining and praying: Beloved Christ, let me live a little longer at any price! If it's only for a few days more, or a few hours even, have mercy, Almighty God, and let me still clutch greedily to my yellow heart this sweet treasure, this jewel beyond price, the dirty, stinking bit of withered old flesh which is my beautiful little life! (He laughs with a sneering, vindictive self-loathing, staring inward at himself with contempt and hatred. Then abruptly he makes Hickey again the antagonist.) You think you'll make me admit that to myself? . Eugene ONeill
17
I'm thinking 'tis only slaves do be giving heed to the day that's gone or the day to come. Eugene ONeill
18
To hell with the truth! As the history of the world proves, the truth has no bearing on anything. It's irrelevant and immaterial, as the lawyers say. The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober. Eugene ONeill
19
Why can’t you remember your Shakespeare and forget the third-raters. You’ll find what you’re trying to say in him- as you’ll find everything else worth saying. 'We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with sleep.''- 'Fine! That’s beautiful. But I wasn’t trying to say that. We are such stuff as manure is made on, so let’s drink up and forget it. That’s more my idea. Eugene ONeill
20
Because any fool knows that to work hard at something you want to accomplish is the only way to be happy. But beyond that it is entirely up to you. You’ve got to do for yourself all the seeking and finding concerned with what you want to do. Anyone but yourself is useless to you there. Eugene ONeill
21
Now look here, Smithers. They's two kind's of stealing. They's the small kind, like what you does, and the big kind, like I does. Fo' de small stealing dey put you in jail soon or late. But fo' de big stealin' dey puts your picture in de paper and yo' statue in de Hall of Fame when you croak. If dey's one thing I learned in ten years on de Pullman cars, listenin' to de white quality talk, it's dat same fact. And when I gits a chance to use it. . from stowaway to emperor in two years. Dat's goin' some!. Eugene ONeill
22
Happiness hates the timid! Eugene ONeill
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Life is for each man a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors. Eugene ONeill
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Man's loneliness is but his fear of life. Eugene ONeill
25
The child was diseased at birth - stricken with an hereditary ill that only the most vital men are able to shake off. I mean poverty - the most deadly and prevalent of all diseases. Eugene ONeill
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The only living life is in the past and future-the present is an interlude- strange interlude in which we call on past and future to bear witness that we are living. Eugene ONeill
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There is no present or future only the past happening over and over again now. Eugene ONeill
28
On my solemn oath, Edmund, I'd gladly face not having an acre of land to call my own, nor a penny in the bank, I'd be willing to have no home but the poorhouse in my old age, if I could look back now on having been the fine artist I might have been. Eugene ONeill
29
One should either be sad or joyful. Contentment is a warm sty for eaters and sleepers. Eugene ONeill
30
Obsessed by a fairy tale, we spend our lives searching for a magic door and a lost kingdom of peace. Eugene ONeill