Arcadia Stoppard Quotes

It is a defect of God's humor that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them.

The ordinary-sized stuff which is our lives, the things people write poetry about—clouds—daffodils—waterfalls—what happens in a cup of coffee when the cream goes in—these things are full of mystery, as mysterious to us as the heavens were to the Greeks.

When we have found all the mysteries and lost all the meaning, we will be alone, on an empty shore.

It's the wanting to know that makes us matter.

It makes me so happy. To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing.... A door like this has cracked open five or six times since we got up on our hind legs. It's the best possible time of being alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.

What are a friend's books for if not to be borrowed?

It's the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.

The unpredictable and the predetermined unfold together to make everything the way it is.

We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?

Septimus. When we have found all the mysteries and lost all the meaning, we will be all alone, on an empty shore. Thomasina. Then we will dance. Is this a waltz?

He says his aim is poetry. One does not aim at poetry with pistols. At poets, perhaps.

Seduced her? Every time I turned round she was up a library ladder. In the end I gave in. That reminds me—I spotted something between her legs that made me think of you.

VALENTINE: Are you talking about Lord Byron, the poet? BERNARD: No, you fucking idiot, we're talking about Lord Byron, the chartered accountant.

If knowledge isn't self-knowledge it isn't doing much, mate. Is the universe expanding? Is it contracting? Is it standing on one leg and singing 'When Father Painted the Parlour'? Leave me out. I can expand my universe without you. 'She walks into beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies, and all that's best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes.

Carnal embrace is the practice of throwing one's arms around a side of beef.

We're better at predicting events at the edge of the galaxy or inside the nucleus of an atom than whether it'll rain on auntie's garden party three Sundays from now.

When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a meteor in my astronomical atlas. But if you stir backwards, the jam will not come together again. Indeed, the pudding does not notice and continues to turn pink just as before. Do you think this is odd?

The universe is deterministic all right, just like Newton said, I mean it's trying to be, but the only thing going wrong is people fancying people who aren't supposed to be in that part of the plan.

Chater: You dare to call me that. I demand satisfaction! Septimus: Mrs Chater demanded satisfaction and now you are demanding satisfaction. I cannot spend my time day and night satisfying the demands of the Chater family.

Comparing what we're looking for misses the point. It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we're going out the way we came in. That's why you can't believe in the afterlife, Valentine. Believe in the after, by all means, but not the life. Believe in God, the soul, the spirit, the infinite, believe in angels if you like, but not in the great celestial get-together for an exchange of views. If the answers are in the back of the book I can wait, but what a drag. Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final.

Carnal embrace is sexual congress, which is the insertion of the male genital organ into the female genital organ for purposes of procreation and pleasure. Fermat’s last theorem, by contrast, asserts that when x, y and z are whole numbers each raised to power of n, the sum of the first two can never equal the third when n is greater than 2.

THOMASINA: But then the Egyptian noodle made carnal embrace with the enemy who burned the great library of Alexandria without so much as a fine for all that is overdue!

THOMASINA: ....the enemy who burned the great library of Alexandria without so much as a fine for all that is overdue. Oh, Septimus! -- can you bear it? All the lost plays of the Athenians! Two hundred at least by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides -- thousands of poems -- Aristotle's own library!....How can we sleep for grief? SEPTIMUS: By counting our stock. Seven plays from Aeschylus, seven from Sophocles, nineteen from Euripides, my lady! You should no more grieve for the rest than for a buckle lost from your first shoe, or for your lesson book which will be lost when you are old. We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?

HANNAH: ....English landscape was invented by gardeners imitating foreign painters who were evoking classical authors. The whole thing was brought home in the luggage from the Grand Tour. Here, look -- Capability Brown doing Claude, who was doing Virgil. Arcadia! And here, superimposed by Richard Noakes, untamed nature in the style of Salvator Rosa. It's the Gothic novel expressed in landscape. Everything but vampires.

We shed as we pick up, like travelers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again.

A lesson in folly is worth two in wisdom.

HANNAH: Don't let Bernard get to you. It's only performance art, you know. Rhetoric, they used to teach it in ancient times, like PT. It's not about being right, they had philosophy for that. Rhetoric was their chat show. Bernard's indignation is a sort of aerobics for when he gets on television.

If everything from the furthest planet to the smallest atom of our brain acts according to Newton’s law of motion, what becomes of free will?

LADY CROOM: You have been reading too many novels by Mrs Radcliffe, that is my opinion. This is a garden for The Castle of Otranto or The Mysteries of Udolpho -- CHATER: The Castle of Otranto, my lady, is by Horace Walpole. NOAKES: (Thrilled) Mr Walpole the gardener?! LADY CROOM: Mr Chater, you are a welcome guest at Sidley Park but while you are one, The Castle of Otranto was written by whomsoever I say it was, otherwise what is the point of being a guest or having one?

LADY CROOM: ....My lake is drained to a ditch for no purpose I can understand, unless it be that snipe and curlew have deserted three counties so that they may be shot in our swamp. What you painted as forest is a mean plantation, your greenery is mud, your waterfall is wet mud, and your mount is an opencast mine for the mud that was lacking in the dell. (Pointing through the window) What is that cowshed? NOAKES: The hermitage, my lady? LADY CROOM: It is a cowshed. NOAKES: It is, I assure you, a very habitable cottage, properly founded and drained, two rooms and a closet under a slate roof and a stone chimney -- LADY CROOM: And who is to live in it? NOAKES: Why, the hermit. LADY CROOM: Where is he? NOAKES: Madam? LADY CROOM: You surely do not supply an hermitage without a hermit? NOAKES: Indeed, madam -- LADY CROOM: Come, come, Mr Noakes. If I am promised a fountain I expect it to come with water. What hermits do you have? NOAKES: I have no hermits, my lady. LADY CROOM: Not one? I am speechless. NOAKES: I am sure a hermit can be found. One could advertise. LADY CROOM: Advertise? NOAKES: In the newspapers. LADY CROOM: But surely a hermit who takes a newspaper is not a hermit in whom one can have complete confidence.

SEPTIMUS: My lady, I was alone with my thoughts in the gazebo, when Mrs Chater ran me to ground, and I being in such a passion, in an agony of unrelieved desire -- LADY CROOM: Oh....! SEPTIMUS: -- I thought in my madness that the Chater with her skirts over her head would give me the momentary illusion of the happiness to which I dared not put a face. (Pause.) LADY CROOM: I do not know when I have received a more unusual compliment, Mr Hodge. I hope I am more than a match for Mrs Chater with her head in a bucket. Does she wear drawers? SEPTIMUS: She does. LADY CROOM: Yes, I have heard that drawers are being worn now. It is unnatural for women to be got up like jockeys. I cannot approve.

Thomasina: Septimus, what is carnal embrace? Septimus: Carnal embrace is the practice of throwing one's arms around a side of beef.

Do not dabble in paradox, Edward, it puts you in danger of fortuitous wit.

As her tutor you have a duty to keep her in ignorance.

Mr Hodge, ignorance should be like an empty vessel waiting to be filled at the well of truth – not a cabinet of vulgar curios.

Lending one’s bicycle is a form of safe sex, possibly the safest there is.

SEPTIMUS: When we have found all the mysteries and lost all the meaning, we will be alone, on an empty shore. THOMASINA: Then we will dance. Is this a waltz?

We shed as we pick up, like travelers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those left behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. -

No more you can, time must needs run backward, and since it will not, we must stir our way onward mixing as we go, disorder out of disorder into disorder until pink is complete, unchanging and unchangeable, and we are done with it for ever. This is known as free will or self-determination.

It's all trivial-your grouse, my hermit, Bernard's Byron. Comparing what we're looking for misses the point. It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we're going out the way we came in. That's why you can't believe in the afterlife, Valentine. Believe in the after but not the life. Believe in god, the solid, the spirit, the infinite, believe in angels if you like, but not in the great celestial get-together for an exchange of view. If the answers are in the back of the book I can wait, but what a drag. Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final.

Bernard: ... By the way, Valentina, do you want credit? - 'the game book recently discovered by.'? Valentine: It was never lost, Bernard. Bernard: 'As recently pointed out by.' I don't normally like giving credit where it's due, but with scholarly articles as with divorce, there is a certain cachet in citing a member of the aristocracy. I'll pop it in ad lib for the lecture, and give you a mention in the press release. How's that? Valentine: Very kind.

If you could stop every atom in its position and direction, and if your mind could comprehend all the actions thus suspended, then if you were really, really good at algebra you could write the formula for all the future; and although nobody can be so clever as to do it, the formula must exist just as if one could.

You cannot stir things apart.

Croom He insists on it, and finds the proof of his wife’s virtue in his eagerness to defend it.

Yes, I think you’re the first person to think of this.

Mrs Chater demanded satisfaction and now you are demanding satisfaction. I cannot spend my time day and night satisfying the demands of the Chater family.

I've always been given credit for my unconcern.

The future is disorder.

If you act only on what you should do without heed for what you want to do, you’re nothing more than a machine, a phenomenon.

Mr Chater, you are a welcome guest at Sidley Park but while you are one, The Castle of Otranto was written by whomsoever I say it was, otherwise what is the point of being a guest or having one?

Noakes (bleating) Lord Little has one very similar – Lady Croom I cannot relieve Lord Little’s misfortunes by adding to my own. Pray, what is this rustic hovel that presumes to superpose itself on my gazebo?

I had a dream which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars Did wander darkling in the eternal space, Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air

If knowledge isn't self-knowledge it isn't doing much, mate. Is the universe expanding? Is it contracting? Is it standing on one leg and singing 'When Father Painted the Parlour'? Leave me out. I can expand my universe without you.

It is plain that there are some things a girl is allowed to understand, and these include the whole of algebra, but there are others, such as embracing a side of beef, that must be kept from her until she is old enough to have a carcass of her own.

The ordinary-sized stuff which is our lives, the things people write poetry about — clouds — daffodils — waterfalls — and what happens in a cup of coffee when the cream goes in — these things are full of mystery, as mysterious to us as the heavens were to the Greeks.

Thomasina Correct? What was incorrect in it? (She looks into the book.) Alpha minus? Pooh! What is the minus for? Septimus For doing more than was asked. Thomasina You did not like my discovery? Septimus A fancy is not a discovery. Thomasina A gibe is not a rebuttal.

Tom Stoppard’s other work includes: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Jumpers, Travesties, Night and Day, After Magritte, The Real Thing, Enter A Free Man, Hapgood, Arcadia, Indian Ink (a stage adaptation of his own play, In the Native State) and The Invention of Love. Arcadia

Don’t let Bernard get to you. It’s only performance art, you know. Rhetoric. They used to teach it in ancient times, like PT. It’s not about being right, they had philosophy for that. Rhetoric was their chat show. Bernard’s indignation is a sort of aerobics for when he gets on television.

Each week I plot your equations dot for dot, xs against ys in all manner of algebraical relation, and every week they draw themselves as commonplace geometry, as if the world of forms were nothing but arcs and angles. God’s truth, Septimus, if there is an equation for a curve like a bell, there must be an equation for one like a bluebell, and if a bluebell, why not a rose? Do we believe nature is written in numbers? Septimus We do. Thomasina Then why do your equations only describe the shapes of manufacture? Septimus I do not know. Thomasina Armed thus, God could only make a cabinet.

Thomasina (to Septimus) How is a ruined child different from a ruined castle? Septimus On such questions I defer to Mr Noakes. Noakes (out of his depth) A ruined castle is picturesque, certainly. Septimus That is the main difference. (to Brice) I teach the classical authors. If I do not elucidate their meaning, who will?

When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a meteor in my astronomical atlas. But if you stir backward, the jam will not come together again. Indeed, the pudding does not notice and continues to turn pink just as before. Do you think this is odd?

Oh, you’re going to zap me with penicillin and pesticides. Spare me that and I’ll spare you the bomb and aerosols. But don’t confuse progress with perfectibility. A great poet is always timely. A great philosopher is an urgent need. There’s no rush for Isaac Newton. We were quite happy with Aristotle’s cosmos. Personally, I preferred it. Fifty-five crystal spheres geared to God’s crankshaft is my idea of a satisfying universe. I can’t think of anything more trivial than the speed of light. Quarks, quasars—big bangs, black holes—who gives a shit? How did you people con us out of all that status? All that money? And why are you so pleased with yourselves?

The whole Romantic sham, Bernard! It’s what happened to the Enlightenment, isn’t it? A century of intellectual rigour turned in on itself. A mind in chaos suspected of genius. In a setting of cheap thrills and false emotion. The history of the garden says it all, beautifully. There’s an engraving of Sidley Park in 1730 that makes you want to weep. Paradise in the age of reason. By 1760 everything had gone – the topiary, pools and terraces, fountains, an avenue of limes – the whole sublime geometry was ploughed under by Capability Brown. The grass went from the doorstep to the horizon and the best box hedge in Derbyshire was dug up for the ha-ha so that the fools could pretend they were living in God’s countryside. And then Richard Noakes came in to bring God up to date. By the time he’d finished it looked like this (the sketch book). The decline from thinking to feeling, you see.

God’s truth, Septimus, if there is an equation for a curve like a bell, there must be an equation for one like a bluebell, and if a bluebell, why not a rose? Do we believe nature is written in numbers? SEPTIMUS We do. THOMASINA Then why do your equations only describe the shapes of manufacture? SEPTIMUS I do not know. THOMASINA Armed thus, God could only make a cabinet. SEPTIMUS He has mastery of equations which lead into infinities where we cannot follow.

English landscape was invented by gardeners imitating foreign painters who were evoking classical authors. The whole thing was brought home in the luggage from the grand tour. Here, look – Capability Brown doing Claude, who was doing Virgil. Arcadia! And here, superimposed by Richard Noakes, untamed nature in the style of Salvator Rosa. It’s the Gothic novel expressed in landscape. Everything but vampires. There’s an account of my hermit in a letter by your illustrious namesake.

also by the same author ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD THE REAL INSPECTOR HOUND ENTER A FREE MAN AFTER MAGRITTE JUMPERS TRAVESTIES DIRTY LINEN AND NEW-FOUND-LAND NIGHT AND DAY DOGG’S HAMLET, CAHOOT’S MACBETH ROUGH CROSSING and ON THE RAZZLE (adapted from Ferenc Molnár’s Play at the Castle and Johann Nestroy’s Einen Jux will er sich machen) THE REAL THING THE DOG IT WAS THAT DIED AND OTHER PLAYS SQUARING THE CIRCLE with EVERY GOOD BOY DESERVES FAVOUR and PROFESSIONAL FOUL HAPGOOD DALLIANCE AND UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY (a version of Arthur Schintzler’s Das weite Land) ARCADIA INDIAN INK (an adaptation of In the Native State) THE INVENTION OF LOVE

It’s the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong. —Tom Stoppard, Arcadia, 1993

Es el mejor tiempo posible para vivir, cuando casi todo lo que creías saber resulta estar equivocado. Tom Stoppard, Arcadia, Acto 1, Escena

We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?

What a faint-heart! We must work outward from the middle of the maze.