A. W. Hare Quotes

What do our clergy lose by reading their sermons? They lose preaching, the preaching of the voice in many cases, the preaching of the eye almost always.

Many men spend their lives in gazing at their own shadows, and so dwindle away into shadows thereof.

Science sees signs; Poetry, the thing signified. Co-author with his brother Julius Hare.

Philosophy is the love of wisdom: Christianity is the wisdom of love.

Do, and have done. The former is far the easiest.

Nobody who is afraid of laughing, and heartily too, at his friend, can be said to have a true and thorough love for him.

When a watch goes ill, it is not enough to move the hands; you must set the regulator. When a man does ill, it is not enough to alter his handiwork, you must regulate his heart.

Mythology is not religion. It may rather be regarded as the ancient substitute, the poetical counterpart, for dogmatic theology.

Instead of watching the bird as it flies above our heads, we chase his shadow along the ground; and, finding we cannot grasp it, we conclude it to be nothing.

What is really special about dogs is they're really similar to even human toddlers.

The majority don't like me before the curtain goes up, and I always have to win them.

The actual business of writing dialogue is not thought of as a craft.

One of the things I find about getting older is that I seem to get louder, more voluble; that I constantly have to walk around repressing my vitality.

I have a very, very good relationship with 10 percent of the audience. The only purpose of art is intimacy. That's the only point.

I fell into writing plays by accident. But the reason I write plays is that it's the only thing I'm any good at.

I never used to kill characters, because I thought killing characters was cheating.

The orthodoxy of America is as rigid as that of Soviet Russia. There is one point of view allowed. If you start a conversation from another point of view, the words dry in your mouth.

I'm vey bad at marshaling arguments. I can't, at a dinner party, explain why I'm a socialist and why others should be socialists as well.

In those days, the early 1980s, TV and film were interchangeable.

Via Dolorosa is the only thing I have ever acted in my life, professionally, and Ill never act again.

The one thing that Via Dolorosa has is no opinions. To me, curiosity is 50 times as valuable as opinion.

As you write plays, you discover what you believe. And until you know what you believe, you can't write a play.

It's inevitable that you will die, so the only question is when. The great thrillers are the moments that play and tease with the question, "When will it be?"

One of the depressing things in England is the total orthodoxy: the law is handed down from Downing Street.

[David] Mamet's the writer I admire most but he's way off from when he tries to talk about what the moral appeal of liberal thought is. His heart is not in it.

Insofar as I'm good at directing, it's because I've become a writer.

I think the novel is the American form because people read it in private, and the only valuable things that happen in America happen in private life, because public life is a dead loss.

Comic-Con is a special kind of crazy.

Michael Winterbottom is one of the great directors of this century.

We live in a world where we're all on computers and tablets and phones, all the time, so something as odd as computer hacking or a virus is really scary because it gets to the heart of our security.

I hate singing. I hate dancing. I enjoyed doing 'Cabaret' and 'Assassins,' but I would wither up and die in 'The Music Man.'

I read 'Dracula' in high school. I've been around vampires forever.

For all the import and message of 'The Iliad,' it's ultimately a story that's meant to be heard, and the person hearing 'The Iliad' determines what it means.

If you see me in New York, you'll probably see me on my bicycle riding furiously between a city bus and a taxi cab, hitting one of them on the side and yelling at them.

Few people have courage enough to appear as good as they really are. Most people confuse greatness with power, despite the fact that greatness has nothing to do with power.

To no kind of begging are people so averse, as to begging pardon; that is, when there is any serious ground for doing so.

If your divines are not philosophers, your philosophy will neither be divine, nor able to divine.

The act of writing is the act of discovering what you believe.

Of course you know, this means war.

There are things in this world that the children hear, but whose sounds oscillate below an adult's sense of pitch.

Warren Buffett is one of the best learning machines on this earth. The turtles which outrun the hares are learning machines. If you stop learning in this world, the world rushes right by you.

Husband and wife are like a pair of scissors, joined together for life but always moving in opposite directions. If anyone comes in between, they join together and cut them off.

If you don't steal time, time will loot you.

A Christian is God Almighty's gentleman.

The percentage of mistakes in quick decisions is no greater than in long-drawn-out vacillations and the effect of decisiveness itself "makes things go" and creates confidence.

Half the failures in life come from pulling one's horse in when he is leaping.

A faith that sets bounds to itself that will believe so much and no more that will trust so far and no further is none.

How few are our real wants and how easy is it to satisfy them! Our imaginary ones are boundless and insatiable.

Nobody who is afraid of laughing and heartily too at his friend can be said to have a true and thorough love for him.

The greatest truths are the simplest and so are the greatest men.