Quotations by Arthur Miller

ARTHUR MILLER (1915 – 2005), AMERICAN PLAYWRIGHT AND ESSAYIST

"I think the tragic feeling is invoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing -- his sense of personal dignity."

~ Arthur Miller, Tragedy and the Common Man

"A man is not an orange. You can't eat the fruit and throw the peel away."

~ Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

"The need of man to wholly realize himself is the only fixed star."

~ Arthur Miller, Tragedy and the Common Man

"Cleave to no faith when faith brings blood."

~ Arthur Miller, The Crucible, act II

"A small man can be just as exhausted as a great man."

~ Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

"Theology, sir, is a fortress; no crack in a fortress may be accounted small."

~ Arthur Miller, The Crucible

"Success, instead of giving freedom of choice, becomes a way of life. There's no country I've been to where people, when you come into a room and sit down with them, so often ask you, "What do you do?" And, being American, many's the time I've almost asked that question, then realized it's good for my soul not to know. For a while! Just to let the evening wear on and see what I think of this person without knowing what he does and how successful he is, or what a failure. We're ranking everybody every minute of the day."

~ Arthur Miller, Paris Review, Summer 1966

"One had the right to write because other people needed news of the inner world, and if they went too long without such news they would go mad with the chaos of their lives."

~ Arthur Miller, The Shadows of the Gods

"I do not believe that any work of art can help but be diminished by its adherence at any cost to a political program ... and not for any other reason than that there is no political program -- any more than there is a theory of tragedy -- which can encompass the complexities of real life."

~ Arthur Miller, Introduction to Collected Plays

"The Jungle is dark but full of diamonds."

~ Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

"I think it's a mistake to ever look for hope outside of one's self."

~ Arthur Miller, After the Fall

"Cleave to no faith when faith brings blood."

~ Arthur Miller, The Crucible

"Society is inside of man and man is inside society, and you cannot even create a truthfully drawn psychological entity on the stage until you understand his social relations and their power to make him what he is and to prevent him from being what he is not. The fish is in the water and the water is in the fish."

~ Arthur Miller, The Shadows of the Gods

"Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets."

~ Arthur Miller, The Ride Down Mt. Morgan

"The shadow of a cornstalk on the ground is lovely, but it is no denial of its loveliness to see as one looks on it that it is telling the time of day, the position of the earth and the sun, the size of our planet and its shape, and perhaps even the length of its life and ours among the stars."

~ Arthur Miller, The Shadows of the Gods

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Tanvir Shameem

Tanvir Shameem is not the biggest fan of teaching, but he is doing his best to write on various topics of language and literature just to guide thousands of students and researchers across the globe. You can always find him experimenting with presentation, style and diction. He will contribute as long as time permits. You can find him on:

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