Luigi Pirandello

Yes, but haven’t you perceived that it isn’t possible to live in front of a mirror which not only freezes us with the image of ourselves, but throws our likeness back at us with a horrible grimace?

Women are like dreams—they are never the way you would like to have them.

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.

Logic is one thing, the human animal another. You can quite easily propose a logical solution to something and at the same time hope in your heart of hearts it won’t work out.

You too must not count overmuch on your reality as you feel it today, since, like that of yesterday, it may prove an illusion for you tomorrow.

Pretending is a virtue. If you can’t pretend, you can’t be king.

Life is little more than a loan shark: it exacts a very high rate of interest for the few pleasures it concedes.

Every true man, sir, who is a little above the level of the beasts and plants does not live for the sake of living, without knowing how to live; but he lives so as to give a meaning and a value of his own to life.

Not one of us can lie or pretend. We’re all fixed in good faith in a certain concept of ourselves.

When [man] is happy, he takes his happiness as it comes and doesn t analyze it, just as if happiness were his right.

Each of us when he appears before his fellows is clothed in a certain dignity. But every man knows what unconfessable things pass within the secrecy of his own heart.

Anyone can be heroic from time to time, but a gentleman is something you have to be all the time. Which isn't easy.

My opinion is a view I hold until—well-until I find out something that changes it.

When the characters are really alive before their author, the latter does nothing but follow them in their action, in their words, in the situations which they suggest to him.

The facts are to blame, my friend. We are all imprisoned by facts: I was born, I exist.

A fact is like a sack which won’t stand up when it is empty. In order that it may stand up, one has to put into it the reason and sentiment which have caused it to exist.

Woe to him who doesn’t know how to wear his mask, be he king or Pope!

Life is full of infinite absurdities, which, strangely enough, do not even need to appear plausible, since they are true.

When you say you are in love with humanity, you are well satisfied with yourself.

It is much easier to be a hero than a gentleman.

Refusing to have an opinion is a way of having one, isn’t it?

Each in His Own Way

In bed my real love has always been the sleep that rescued me by allowing me to dream.

The secret of living is to find...the pivot of a concept on which you can make your stand.

Six characters in search of an author.

title of play (1921)

Luigi Pirandello

Poems

Quotes

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