Best Pirandello Quotes & Sayings

Whatever is a reality today, whatever you touch and believe in and that seems real for you today, is going to be, like the reality of yesterday, an illusion tomorrow. — Luigi Pirandello

Phantoms in general are nothing more than trifling disorders of the spirit; images we cannot contain within the bounds of sleep. — Luigi Pirandello

But 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. — Luigi Pirandello

Pretending is a virtue. If you cant pretend, you can't be king. — Luigi Pirandello

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. — Luigi Pirandello

We're like so many puppets hung on the wall, waiting for someone to come and move us or make us talk. — Luigi Pirandello

A fact is like a sack which won't stand up if it's empty. In order that it may stand up, one has to put into it the reason and sentiment which caused it to exist. — Luigi Pirandello

Ours is an immutable reality which should make you shudder when you approach us if you are really conscious of the fact that your reality is a mere transitory and fleeting illusion, taking this form today and that tomorrow, — Luigi Pirandello

This is the real drama for me; the belief that we all, you see, think of ourselves as one single person: but it's not true: each of us is several different people, and all these people live inside us. With one person we seem like this and with another we seem very different. But we always have the illusion of being the same person for everybody and of always being the same person in everything we do. But it's not true! It's not true! We find this out for ourselves very clearly when by some terrible chance we're suddenly stopped in the middle of doing something and we're left dangling there, suspended. We realize then, that every part of us was not involved in what we'd been doing and that it would be a dreadful injustice of other people to judge us only by this one action as we dangle there, hanging in chains, fixed for all eternity, as if the whole of one's personality were summed up in that single, interrupted action. — Luigi Pirandello

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

It is misery, you know, unspeakable misery for the man who lives alone and who detests sordid, casual affairs; not old enough to do without women, but not young enough to be able to go and look for one without shame! — Luigi Pirandello

No sir, no. We act that role for which we have been cast, that role which we are given in life. And in my own case, passion itself, as usually happens, becomes a trifle theatrical when it is exalted. — Luigi Pirandello

Woe to him who doesn't know how to wear his mask, be he king or pope! — Luigi Pirandello

Buffoons, buffoons! One can play any tune on them! — Luigi Pirandello

I don't know to what author you may be alluding, but believe me I feel what I think; and I seem to be philosophizing only for those who do not think what they feel, because they blind themselves with their own sentiment. I know that for many people this self-blinding seems much more "human"; but the contrary is really true. — Luigi Pirandello

I present myself to you in a form suitable to the relationship I wish to achieve to you. — Luigi Pirandello

And no one realizes we should all, always, look like that, each with his eyes full of horror at his own, inescapable solitude. — Luigi Pirandello

Life is a very sad piece of buffoonery, because we have .. the need to fool ourselves continuously by the spontaneous creation of a reality .. which, from time to time, reveals itself to be vain and illusory. — Luigi Pirandello

Refusing to have an opinion is a way of having one, isn't it? — Luigi Pirandello

I hate symbolic art in which the presentation loses all spontaneous movement in order to become a machine, an allegory
a vain and misconceived effort because the very fact of giving an allegorical sense to a presentation clearly shows that we have to do with a fable which by itself has no truth either fantastic or direct; it was made for the demonstration of some moral truth. — Luigi Pirandello

I am an "unrealized" character, dramatically speaking ... — Luigi Pirandello

...and here, in this if I always lose myself. — Luigi Pirandello

One gives way to the temptation, only to rise from it again, afterwards, with a great eagerness to reestablish one's dignity, as if it were a tombstone to place on the grave of one's shame, and a monument to hide and sign the memory of our weaknesses. Everybody's in the same case. Some folks haven't the courage to say certain things, that's all!
THE STEP-DAUGHTER: All appear to have the courage to do them though. — Luigi Pirandello

THE FATHER: But don't you see that the whole trouble lies here? In words, words. Each one of us has within him a whole world of things, each man of us his own special world. And how can we ever come to an understanding if I put in the words I utter the sense and value of things as I see them; while you who listen to me must inevitably translate them according to the conception of things each one of you has within himself. We think we understand each other, but we never really do. — Luigi Pirandello

How can we ever come to an understanding if I put in the words I utter the sense and value of things as I see them; while you who listen to me must inevitably translate them according to the conception of things each one of you has within himself. — Luigi Pirandello

Shake yourself free from the manikin you create out of a false interpretation of what you do and what you feel, and you'll at once see that the manikin you make yourself is nothing at all like what you really are or what you really can be! — Luigi Pirandello

You don't appreciate the fact that madmen are very lucky. — Luigi Pirandello

We all have a world of things inside ourselves and each one of us has his own private world. How can we understand each other if the words I use have the sense and the value that I expect them to have, but whoever is listening to me inevitably thinks that those same words have a different sense and value, because of the private world he has inside himself, too. — Luigi Pirandello

Those who understood, in fact, say: 'I mustn't do this, I mustn't do that,' so as not to commit some stupidity or other! Splendid! But at a certain point we realize that all life is stupidity; so tell me yourself what it means never to have done anything foolish. At the very least it means you have never lived. — Luigi Pirandello

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. — Luigi Pirandello