William Saroyan Quote

The basic truth of all things, as nearly as we may ever dream of determining and knowing this truth,...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from ...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

Every man in the world is better than someone else and not as good someone else.
WILLIAM SAROYAN

Doctors don't know everything really. They understand matter, not spirit. And you and I live in spir...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

Of course if you like your kids, if you love them from the moment they begin, you yourself begin all...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

The idiot is indeed the good man, but only because he doesn't know any better.
WILLIAM SAROYAN

If I have any desire at all, it is to show the brotherhood of man.
WILLIAM SAROYAN

Remember that every man is a variation of yourself
WILLIAM SAROYAN

What the hell are they all looking for? A way out. A way to the right way out. A way to leave. A way...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure.
WILLIAM SAROYAN

The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.
WILLIAM SAROYAN

No city invites the heart to come to life as San Francisco does. Arrival in San Francisco is an expe...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

The most solid advice for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

Christmas is sights, especially the sights of Christmas reflected in the eyes of a child
WILLIAM SAROYAN

If you're alive, you can't be bored in San Francisco. If you're not alive, San Francisco will bring ...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding place and let be free and...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

I was never interested in the obvious, or in the details one takes for granted, and everybody seemed...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

The role of art is to make a world which can be tolerated.
WILLIAM SAROYAN

Many people hear voices when no-one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up on rooms w...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

When you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You wi...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

I heard that if you locked William Shakespeare in a room with a typewriter for long enough, he'd eve...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

Human greatness is a rather difficult thing to account for, and more often than not one is mistaken ...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

What the hell are they all looking for? A decent way to give it all over to the giver of it all, wit...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

If you can measure it, don't. If you can weigh it, it isn't worth the bother. It isn't what you're a...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

I care so much about everything that I care about nothing
WILLIAM SAROYAN

Everybody has got to die, but I always believed an exception would be made in my case. Now what?
WILLIAM SAROYAN

Ignore the obvious, for it is unworthy of the clear eye and the kindly heart.
WILLIAM SAROYAN

I looked, I saw, I understood, I felt, "That's that, where do we go from here?
WILLIAM SAROYAN

Mi sueño es agitado. Mis nervios están desquiciados. Mi piel está seca. Mi cabello cae. Mis ojos ...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

Neither love nor hate, nor any order of intense adherence to personal involvement in human experienc...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

This transformation in kids - from flashing dragonflies, so to say, to sticky water-surface worms sl...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

Despise evil and un godliness but not men of un godliness or evil.
WILLIAM SAROYAN

I see death as a private event, the destruction of the universe in the brain and in the senses of ma...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

Whoever the kid had been, whoever had had the grand attitude, has finally heeded the admonishment of...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

He neither walks with the multitude nor cheers with them. The writer who is a real writer is a rebel...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

What is a street? It is where the living weep, where the dead go off in silence to their peace.
WILLIAM SAROYAN

I used to be the fastest telegram messenger boy in all Fresno. My nickname was "Speed." Finally, I s...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and ...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

Be the inferior of no man, nor of any be the superior. Remember that every man is a variation of you...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

A growing thing whose stages of growth always went unnoticed ...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

He wanted to be a passenger on anything that was going anywhere, but most of all on a ship.
WILLIAM SAROYAN

Is the small town a place, truly, of the world, or is it no more than something out of a boy's dream...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably isn't happiness.
WILLIAM SAROYAN

—Tú hablas sin palabras. Todos estamos siempre hablando sin palabras.
—¿Y para qué valen...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

Give me something about bacteria. Give me something that won't make me feel so inferior
WILLIAM SAROYAN

You must remember always to give, of everything you have. You must give foolishly even. You must be ...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

You may tend to get cancer from the thing that makes you want to smoke so much, not from the smoking...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

Whatever neutrality is, it is not very useful to anybody, and time is running out. If we do not do u...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

When I behold other people, who are of course the children of some family or other, and think of my ...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

I don't like to see kids throw away their truth just because it isn't worth a dime in the open marke...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

I am enormously wise and abysmally ignorant
WILLIAM SAROYAN

I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant peopl...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

The simple fact was that if the song wasn't about me, I couldn't see how it could possibly be about ...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

Every man in the world is better than someone else and not as good as someone else.
WILLIAM SAROYAN

They understand matter, not spirit. And you and I live in spirit.
WILLIAM SAROYAN

My work is writing, but my real work is being.
WILLIAM SAROYAN

My wisdom was visual and as swift as vision.
WILLIAM SAROYAN

You write a hit play the same way you write a flop.
WILLIAM SAROYAN

I can't hate for long. It isn't worth it.
WILLIAM SAROYAN

Nothing good ever ends.
WILLIAM SAROYAN

But the world was my home and I was glad to be in it.
WILLIAM SAROYAN

While the train was going by, I knew that a man will go away without ever having reached anywhere, a...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

The streets made me, and the streets stink, but I love them, for I was born in them out of flesh and...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

We get very little wisdom from success, you know.
WILLIAM SAROYAN

I was a little afraid of him; not the boy himself, but of what he seemed to be: the victim of the wo...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

San Francisco itself is art, above all literary art. Every block is a short story, every hill a nove...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

Are we sure it is desirable for a man's spirit not to be at war with itself, or that it is better to...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

I'm not the kind of guy to knock at a door and then when the door is opened not go in.
WILLIAM SAROYAN

One of us is obviously mistaken.
WILLIAM SAROYAN

No enemy is so annoying as one who was a friend, or still is a friend, and there are many more of th...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

Without pressure, the work doesn't get done at all.
WILLIAM SAROYAN

No man's guilt is not yours, nor is any man's innocence a thing apart.
WILLIAM SAROYAN

I am interested in madness. I believe it is the biggest thing in the human race, and the most consta...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.
WILLIAM SAROYAN

Three times in my life I have been captured: by the orphanage, by school, and by the Army. But I'm m...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

There could be no extreme vanity in my recognition of myself, if in fact there could be any at all.
WILLIAM SAROYAN

He paints for the blind, and we are the blind, and he lets us see for sure what we saw long ago but ...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

The most solid advice for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

In the time of your life, live—so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for y...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

All great art has madness, and quite a lot of bad art has it, too.
WILLIAM SAROYAN

Although I write in English, and despite the fact that I’m from America, I consider myself an Arme...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

When I began to wait to live I really began to wait to die.
WILLIAM SAROYAN

There is no real freedom for the man who is in so much of a hurry that he is annoyed by the human ra...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

If I have any desire at all, it is to show the brotherhood of man. This is a big statement and it so...
WILLIAM SAROYAN

As I grow older, the idea takes increasing hold in me that we've misunderstood our own delicacy ...
ARAM SAROYAN

My father never liked me or my sister, and he never liked our mother either, after an initial infatu...
ARAM SAROYAN

My cup is yellow
Or not, though not's

Impossible
It's yellow
ARAM SAROYAN

Untold love is like falling stars , always fall but never reach
WILLIAM

The more you stab , the more i step
WILLIAM

Time moves in one direction, memory in another.
WILLIAM GIBSON

We'll sort of get over the marriage first and then maybe look at the kids. But obviously we want...
PRINCE WILLIAM

One challenge to the arts in America is the need to make the arts, especially the classic masterpiec...
WILLIAM SAFIRE

You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.
WILLIAM BLAKE

Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common ha...
WILLIAM JAMES

Sex is a natural function. You can't make it happen, but you can teach people to let it happen.
WILLIAM MASTERS

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

To be, or not to be, that is the question.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

We need Hawaii just as much and a good deal more than we did California. It is Manifest Destiny.
WILLIAM MCKINLEY

I don't remember being taught to read, and by the time I was seven years old, I had read a very ...
WILLIAM MORRIS

I can't enter into politico-social subjects with any interest, for on the whole, I see that thin...
WILLIAM MORRIS

It is right and necessary that all should have work to do which shall be worth doing and be of itsel...
WILLIAM MORRIS

Happy as we are, times may alter; we may be bitten with some impulse towards change, and many things...
WILLIAM MORRIS

I am going, if I can, to be an architect, and I am too old already, and there is no time to lose.
WILLIAM MORRIS

We are living in a epoch where there is combat between commercialism, or the system of reckless wast...
WILLIAM MORRIS

To do nothing but grumble and not to act - that is throwing away one's life.
WILLIAM MORRIS

Apart from the desire to produce beautiful things, the leading passion of my life has been and is ha...
WILLIAM MORRIS

It took me years to understand that words are often as important as experience, because words make e...
WILLIAM MORRIS

If you cannot learn to love real art, at least learn to hate sham art and reject it.
WILLIAM MORRIS

I want a real revolution, a real change in society: society, a great organic mass of well-regulated ...
WILLIAM MORRIS

The reward of labour is life. Is that not enough?
WILLIAM MORRIS

A man at work, making something which he feels will exist because he is working at it and wills it, ...
WILLIAM MORRIS

The past is not dead, it is living in us, and will be alive in the future which we are now helping t...
WILLIAM MORRIS

Not on one strand are all life's jewels strung.
WILLIAM MORRIS

No man is good enough to be another's master.
WILLIAM MORRIS

I do not want art for a few any more than education for a few, or freedom for a few.
WILLIAM MORRIS

Give me love and work - these two only.
WILLIAM MORRIS

'Tis best to weigh the enemy more mighty than he seems.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Lord, Lord, how subject we old men are to this vice of lying!
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Life every man holds dear; but the dear man holds honor far more precious dear than life.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Things done well and with a care, exempt themselves from fear.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

There is no darkness but ignorance.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

To do a great right do a little wrong.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Listen to many, speak to a few.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

This above all; to thine own self be true.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

It is not because angels are holier than men or devils that makes them angels, but because they do n...
WILLIAM BLAKE

We know what we are, but know not what we may be.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Time and the hour run through the roughest day.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Desire of having is the sin of covetousness.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

I say there is no darkness but ignorance.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Though she be but little, she is fierce.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

What's done can't be undone.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

All love is lost but upon God alone.
WILLIAM DUNBAR

The hours of folly are measured by the clock; but of wisdom, no clock can measure.
WILLIAM BLAKE

I get a fine warm feeling when I'm doing well, but that pleasure is pretty much negated by the p...
WILLIAM STYRON

Religion fails if it cannot speak to men as they are.
WILLIAM BARCLAY

God himself took this human flesh upon him.
WILLIAM BARCLAY

But the best definition of it is to say that heaven is that state where we will always be with Jesus...
WILLIAM BARCLAY

If a man fights his way through his doubts to the conviction that Jesus Christ is Lord, he has attai...
WILLIAM BARCLAY

The awful importance of this life is that it determines eternity.
WILLIAM BARCLAY

The tragedy of life and of the world is not that men do not know God; the tragedy is that, knowing H...
WILLIAM BARCLAY

Love always involves responsibility, and love always involves sacrifice. And we do not really love C...
WILLIAM BARCLAY

For the Christian, heaven is where Jesus is. We do not need to speculate on what heaven will be like...
WILLIAM BARCLAY

When we love anyone with our whole hearts, life begins when we are with that person; it is only in t...
WILLIAM BARCLAY

In the time we have it is surely our duty to do all the good we can to all the people we can in all ...
WILLIAM BARCLAY

A man may well be condemned, not for doing something, but for doing nothing.
WILLIAM BARCLAY

We will often find compensation if we think more of what life has given us and less about what life ...
WILLIAM BARCLAY

When we believe that God is Father, we also believe that such a father's hand will never cause h...
WILLIAM BARCLAY

They say miracles are past.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Wisely, and slow. They stumble that run fast.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Our peace shall stand as firm as rocky mountains.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

I'm William Wallace, and the rest of you will be spared. Go back to England and tell them... Sco...
WILLIAM WALLACE

It's impossible to move, to live, to operate at any level without leaving traces, bits, seemingl...
WILLIAM GIBSON

What is the student but a lover courting a fickle mistress who ever eludes his grasp?
WILLIAM OSLER

Sense shines with a double luster when it is set in humility. An able yet humble man is a jewel wort...
WILLIAM PENN

The execution of any thing considerable implies in the first place previous persevering meditation.
WILLIAM GODWIN

And oftentimes excusing of a fault doth make the fault the worse by the excuse.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
WILLIAM JAMES

Man produces evil as a bee produces honey.
WILLIAM GOLDING

No man knows the value of innocence and integrity but he who has lost them.
WILLIAM GODWIN

Variety's the very spice of life, That gives it all its flavor.
WILLIAM COWPER

I like not fair terms and a villain's mind.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

When words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

There can be no passion, and by consequence no love, where there is not imagination.
WILLIAM GODWIN

Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.
WILLIAM JAMES

Tenderness is the name for a lover's most exquisite sensation; protection is implied in his most...
WILLIAM GODWIN

If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? A...
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

We shall not be happy unless we live like good animals, unless we enjoy the exercise of the ordinary...
WILLIAM MORRIS

The jealous are troublesome to others, but a torment to themselves.
WILLIAM PENN

In marriage do thou be wise: prefer the person before money, virtue before beauty, the mind before t...
WILLIAM PENN

To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to...
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Justice is the insurance which we have on our lives and property. Obedience is the premium which we ...
WILLIAM PENN

Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.
WILLIAM WESTMORELAND

Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have Immortal longings in me.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

My crown is called content, a crown that seldom kings enjoy.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

No, I'm no enemy to learning; it hurts not me.
WILLIAM CONGREVE

To find a young fellow that is neither a wit in his own eye, nor a fool in the eye of the world, is ...
WILLIAM CONGREVE

'Tis well enough for a servant to be bred at an University. But the education is a little too pe...
WILLIAM CONGREVE

If there's delight in love, 'Tis when I see that heart, which others bleed for, bleed for me...
WILLIAM CONGREVE

They are at the end of the gallery; retired to their tea and scandal, according to their ancient cus...
WILLIAM CONGREVE

You are a woman: you must never speak what you think; your words must contradict your thoughts, but ...
WILLIAM CONGREVE

Come, come, leave business to idlers, and wisdom to fools: they have need of 'em: wit be my facu...
WILLIAM CONGREVE

She likes herself, yet others hates, For that which in herself she prizes; And while she laughs at t...
WILLIAM CONGREVE

Wit must be foiled by wit: cut a diamond with a diamond.
WILLIAM CONGREVE

I confess freely to you, I could never look long upon a monkey, without very mortifying reflections.
WILLIAM CONGREVE

Courtship is to marriage, as a very witty prologue to a very dull play.
WILLIAM CONGREVE

Fear comes from uncertainty. When we are absolutely certain, whether of our worth or worthlessness, ...
WILLIAM CONGREVE

There is in true beauty, as in courage, something which narrow souls cannot dare to admire.
WILLIAM CONGREVE

Never go to bed angry, stay up and fight.
WILLIAM CONGREVE

He who closes his ears to the views of others shows little confidence in the integrity of his own vi...
WILLIAM CONGREVE

If this be not love, it is madness, and then it is pardonable.
WILLIAM CONGREVE

In the time of your life, live - so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite variety and mystery of it.

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William Saroyan

In the time of your life, live - so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite variety and mystery of it.

William Saroyan

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