135 Quotes by Luigi Pirandello

One gives way to the temptation, only to rise from it again, afterwards, with a great eagerness to reestablish one's dignity, as if it were a tombstone to place on the grave of one's shame, and a monument to hide and sign the memory of our weaknesses. Everybody's in the same case. Some folks haven't the courage to say certain things, that's all!THE STEP-DAUGHTER: All appear to have the courage to do them though.

Porque la vida, por todas sus descaradas absurdidades, pequeñas y grandes, de que está felizmente llena, tiene el inestimable privilegio de poder prescindir de esta estupidísima verosimilitud, a la que el arte cree su deber prestar obediencia.Las absurdidades de la vida no tienen necesidad de parecer verosímiles, porque son verdaderas. Al contrario de las del arte, que, para parecer verdaderas, tienen necesidad de ser verosímiles. Y entonces, al ser verosímiles, ya no son absurdidades.

Each on his own assumed the truth as such and appropriated it somehow to fill his solitude and to give some kind of substance, day after day, to his life.

Whoever understands the game of life can no longer fool himself, but if you cannot fool yourself, you can no longer derive any pleasure or enjoyment from life. And so it goes, my work is full of compassion, bitter compassion for all those who fool themselves. But this compassion cannot help but be followed by ferocious derision of a destiny that condemns man to deception. And this succinctly is the reason for the bitterness of my art, and also my life.

For man never reasons so much and becomes so introspective as when he suffers ; since he is anxious to get at the cause of his sufferings, to learn who has produced them, and whether it is just or unjust that he should have to bear them. On the other hand, when he is happy, he takes his happiness as it comes and doesn't analyse it, just as if happiness were his right.

We all grasp on to a single idea of ourselves, the way aging people dye their hair. It’s no matter that this dye doesn’t fool you. My lady, you don’t dye your hair to decieve other people, or to fool yourself, but rather to cheat your image in your mirror a little.

Gli uomini hanno in sé un superfluo, che di continuo inutilmente li tormenta, non facendoli paghi di nessuna condizione e sempre lasciandoli incerti del loro destino.

Why are you so anxious to destroy in the name of a vulgar, commonplace sense of truth, this reality which comes to birth attracted and formed by the magic of the stage itself, which has indeed more right to live here than you, since it is much truer than you -- if you don't mind my saying so?

E' questione di misura, contentarsi. Uno si contenta di tanto, (fa segno col pollice sul mignolo) un altro ha tutto e non se ne contenta.