Ugo Betti Quotes

When you want to believe in something, you also have to believe in everything that's necessary for believing in it.

Nature is honest, we aren't; we embalm our dead.

Thought itself needs words. It runs on them like a long wire. And if it loses the habit of words, little by little it becomes shapeless, somber.

There is always a certain peace in being what one is, in being that completely.

The first temptation, upon meeting an old friend after many years, is always to - look the other way.

This free will business is a bit terrifying anyway. It's almost pleasanter to obey, and make the most of it.

To believe in God is to know that all the rules will be fair, and that there will be wonderful surprises.

When I say "I," I mean a thing absolutely unique, not to be confused with any other.

Everyone has, inside himself ... what shall I call it? A piece of good news! Everyone is ... a very great, very important character.

Killing time is the chief end of our society.

The spontaneity of slaps is sincerity, whereas the ceremonial of caresses is largely convention.

Each of us is the only person who can give the other what each of us wants to have: Peace.

'Mad' is a term we use to describe a man who is obsessed with one idea and nothing else.

It so difficult to know what the people we love really need.

A vague uneasiness: the police. It's like when you suddenly understand you have to undress in front of the doctor.

Sisterly love is, of all sentiments, the most abstract. Nature does not grant it any functions.

We know well enough when we're being unjust and despicable. but we don't restrain ourselves because we experience a certain pleasure, a primitive sort of satisfaction in moments like that.

Every tiny part of us cries out against the idea of dying, and hopes to live forever.

When you put a man and a woman together, there are some things they simply have to do. They embrace, they warm each other. All the rest is dead and empty.

Murderers, in general, are people who are consistent, people who are obsessed with one idea and nothing else.

If we have anything kind to say, any tender sentiment to express, we feel a sense of shame.

I think the family is the place where the most ridiculous and least respectable things in the world go on.

A long association-prolonged human contact, when a man and woman live together-this ends up producing a sort of rot, a poison.

We play make believe, pretend to take ourselves and each other seriously--to love each other, hate each other--but then--it isn't true. It isn't true, we don't care at all!

Who cares about great marks left behind? We have one life... just one. Our life. We have nothing else.

Is not man himself the most unsettled of all the creatures of the earth? What is this trembling sensation that is intensified with each ascending step in the natural order?

It's perfectly obvious that somebody's responsible and somebody's innocent. Otherwise it [justice] makes no sense at all.

All of us are mad. If it weren't for the fact that every one of us is slightly abnormal, there wouldn't be any point in giving each person a separate name.

Memories are like stones, time and distance erode them like acid.

At any given moment, I open my eyes and exist. And before that, during all eternity, what was there? Nothing.

Justice! Custodian of the world! But since the world errs, justice must be custodian of the world's errors.

At any given moment, I open my eyes and exist.

Behind everything we feel, there is always a sense of fear.

There is no forgiveness in nature.

We cannot bear to regard ourselves simply as playthings of blind chance, we cannot admit to feeling ourselves abandoned.

Nobody is bound by any obligation unless it has first been freely accepted.