Thomas Lanier Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983), known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright. Along with contemporaries Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the three foremost playwrights of 20th-century American drama. Let’s read our collection of Tennessee Williams Quotes below for inspiration.
Luck is believing you’re lucky.
– Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams Quotes
1. “You can be young without money, but you can’t be old without it.” – Tennessee Williams
2. “Some things are not forgiveable. Deliberate cruelty is not forgiveable. It is the most unforgiveable thing in my opinion, and the one thing in which I have never, ever been guilty.” – Tennessee Williams
3. “Time is the longest distance between two places.” – Tennessee Williams
4. “Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.” – Tennessee Williams
5. “The future is called ‘perhaps’, which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the important thing is not to allow that to scare you.” – Tennessee Williams
6. “Success and failure are equally disastrous.” – Tennessee Williams
7. “Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it… Success is shy – it won’t come out while you’re watching.” – Tennessee Williams
8. “The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that’s also a hypocrite!” – Tennessee Williams
9. “All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.” – Tennessee Williams
10. “I think that hate is a feeling that can only exist where there is no understanding.” – Tennessee Williams
11. “If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it.” – Tennessee Williams
12. “Physical beauty is passing – a transitory possession – but beauty of the mind, richness of the spirit, tenderness of the heart – i have all these things – aren’t taken away but grow! Increase with the years!” – Tennessee Williams
13. “A high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.” – Tennessee Williams
14. “Funerals are pretty compared to death. Funerals are quiet, but deaths not always.” – Tennessee Williams
15. “I can’t expose a human weakness on the stage unless I know it through having it myself.” – Tennessee Williams
16. “It is planned speeches that contain lies or dissimulations, not what you blurt out so spontaneously in one instant.” – Tennessee Williams
17. “The trouble with this world is that everybody has to compromise and conform.” – Tennessee Williams
18. “Being disappointed is one thing and being discouraged is something else. I am disappointed but I am not discouraged.” – Tennessee Williams
19. “There’s a time for departure even when there’s no certain place to go.” – Tennessee Williams
20. “Once you fully apprehend the vacuity of a life without struggle, you are equipped with the basic means of salvation.” – Tennessee Williams
21. “When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.” – Tennessee Williams
22. “We’re all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.” – Tennessee Williams
23. “Life is an unanswered question, but let’s still believe in the dignity and importance of the question.” – Tennessee Williams
24. “Caged birds accept each other, but flight is what they long for.” – Tennessee Williams
25. “There is only one true aristocracy . . . and that is the aristocracy of passionate souls!” – Tennessee Williams
26. “The human animal is a beast that dies but the fact that he’s dying don’t give him pity for others.” – Tennessee Williams
27. “Enthusiasm is the most important thing in life.” – Tennessee Williams
28. “Friends are God’s way of apologizing to us for our families.” – Tennessee Williams
29. “There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. And then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking in mirrors.” – Tennessee Williams
30. “We are all civilized people, which means that we are all savages at heart but observing a few amenities of civilized behavior.” – Tennessee Williams
31. “Everybody is nothing until you love them.” – Tennessee Williams
32. “To be free is to have achieved your life.” – Tennessee Williams
33. “Don’t look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you’ll know you’re dead.” – Tennessee Williams
34. “All of us are guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.” – Tennessee Williams
35. “It is much easier to give money than love.” – Tennessee Williams
36. “Silence about a thing just magnifies it.” – Tennessee Williams
37. “We have to distrust each other. It’s our only defense against betrayal.” – Tennessee Williams
38. “Dead people give such good advice. Just one word- live!” – Tennessee Williams
39. “I’ve got the guts to die. What I want to know is, have you got the guts to live?” – Tennessee Williams
40. “Symbols are nothing but the natural speech of drama.” – Tennessee Williams
