Christopher Fry

Playwright

1907-12-18

Quotes by Christopher Fry

• There may always be another reality to make fiction of the truth we think we've arrived at.

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• THOMAS GuiltyOf mankind. I have perpetrated human nature. My father and mother were accessories before the fact, But there'll be no accessories after the fact, By my virility there won't! Just see me As I am, like a perambulating Vegetable, patched with inconsequential Hair, looking out of two small jellies for the meansOf life, balanced on folding bones, my sexNo Beauty but a blemish to be hiddenBehind judicious rags, driven and scorched By boomerang rages and lunacies which neverTouch the accommodating artichokeOr the seraphic strawberry beaming in its bed:I defend myself against pain and death by painAnd death, and make the world go round, they tell meBy one of my less lethal appetites:Half this grotesque life I spend in a state Of slow decomposition, using The name of unconsidered God as a pedestal On which I stand and bray that I'm bestOf beasts, until under some patientMoon or other I fall to pieces, Like a cake of dung. Is there a slut would Hold this in her arms and put her lips against it?JENNETSluts are only human. By a quirkOf unastonished nature, your obscene Decaying figure of vegetable funCan drag upon a woman's heart, as thoughHeaven were dragging up the roots of hell. What is to be done? Something compels us into The terrible fallacy that man is desirable and there's no escaping into truth. The crimesAnd cruelties leave us longing, and campaigning Love still pitches his tent of light amongThe suns and moons. You may be decay and a platitudeOf flesh, but I have no other such memory of life. You may be corrupt as ancient applies, well thenCorruption is what I most willingly harvest. You are Evil, Hell, the Father of Lies; if soHell is my home and my days of good were a holiday:Hell is my hill and the world slopes away from itInto insignificance. I have come suddenlyUpon my heart and where it is I see no help for.

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• What after all, is a halo? It's only one more thing to keep clean.

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• There may always be another reality to make fiction of the truth we think we've arrived at.

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• What after all, is a halo? It's only one more thing to keep clean.

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• THOMAS GuiltyOf mankind. I have perpetrated human nature. My father and mother were accessories before the fact, But there'll be no accessories after the fact, By my virility there won't! Just see me As I am, like a perambulating Vegetable, patched with inconsequential Hair, looking out of two small jellies for the meansOf life, balanced on folding bones, my sexNo Beauty but a blemish to be hiddenBehind judicious rags, driven and scorched By boomerang rages and lunacies which neverTouch the accommodating artichokeOr the seraphic strawberry beaming in its bed:I defend myself against pain and death by painAnd death, and make the world go round, they tell meBy one of my less lethal appetites:Half this grotesque life I spend in a state Of slow decomposition, using The name of unconsidered God as a pedestal On which I stand and bray that I'm bestOf beasts, until under some patientMoon or other I fall to pieces, Like a cake of dung. Is there a slut would Hold this in her arms and put her lips against it?JENNETSluts are only human. By a quirkOf unastonished nature, your obscene Decaying figure of vegetable funCan drag upon a woman's heart, as thoughHeaven were dragging up the roots of hell. What is to be done? Something compels us into The terrible fallacy that man is desirable and there's no escaping into truth. The crimesAnd cruelties leave us longing, and campaigning Love still pitches his tent of light amongThe suns and moons. You may be decay and a platitudeOf flesh, but I have no other such memory of life. You may be corrupt as ancient applies, well thenCorruption is what I most willingly harvest. You are Evil, Hell, the Father of Lies; if soHell is my home and my days of good were a holiday:Hell is my hill and the world slopes away from itInto insignificance. I have come suddenlyUpon my heart and where it is I see no help for.

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• Between our birth and death we may touch understanding, As a moth brushes a window with its wing.

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• The best Thing we can do is to make wherever we're lost in Look as much like home as we can.

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• Comedy is an escape, not from the truth but from despair; a narrow escape into faith.

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• Who, apart From ourselves, can see any difference between Our victories and our defeats?

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• The skirts of the gods Drag in our mud. We feel the touch And take it to be a kiss.

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• Life itself is the real and most miraculous miracle of all. If one had never before seen a human hand and were suddenly presented for the first time with this strange and wonderful thing, what a miracle, what a magnificently shocking and inexplicable and mysterious thing it would be.

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• Indulgences, not fulfillment, is what the world Permits us.

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• How can a man learn navigation Where there's no rudder?

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• What is madness To those who only observe, is often wisdom To those to whom it happens.

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• How can we be scrupulous In a life which, from birth onwards, is so determined To wring us dry of any serenity at all?

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• We must each find our separate meaning In the persuasion of our days Until we meet in the meaning of the world.

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• How nature loves the incomplete. She knows If she drew a conclusion it would finish her.

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• Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement.

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• If we could wake each morning with no memory Of living before we went to sleep, we might Arrive at a faultless day, once in a great many.

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