Save something for theThird Act.

-Anonymous
Show business adage applied by President Reagan to his final months in the White House. Quoted in Time,16 Mar1987.

We loved your play.We only have problems with your main character, the second act and the ending.

-Anonymous
  Fan's comment to playwright  Wendy Wasserstein on The Heidi Chronicles. Quoted in the NewYork Times, 24  Jan1991.

It is acting inits purest form.You havetoact with youreyes.

-Bonham Carter, Helena
On playing a chimp in Planet of the Apes. In the Observer, 30 Dec.

My first act on entering this world was to kill my mother.

-Boyd,William Andrew Murray
  The New Confessions, opening words.

Damn him, he could act a gridiron.

-Clive, Kitty
On watching a performance by David Garrick. Quoted in William  Archer's introduction to Dramatic Essays of Leigh Hunt (1894).

: 'Tis for the honour of England that all Europe should know that we have blockheads of all ages. : I wonder there is not an Act of Parliament to save the credit of the nation, and prohibit the exportation of fools.

-Congreve,William
FAINALLMIRABELL1700  The Way of the World, act1, sc.5.

Two things should have been cut. The second act and that youngster's throat.

-Coward, Sir Noe«  l Peirce
After watching a play featuring a14-year-old child star (sometimes identified as Bonnie Langford).  Attributed.

Soit donc que vous composiez, soit donc que vous jouiez, ne pensez non plus au spectateur que s'il n'existait pas. Imaginez sur le bord du the¤  a"  tre, un grand mur qui vous se¤  pare du parterre; jouez comme si la toile ne se levait pas. Whether you compose or act, think no more of the spectator than if he did not exist. Imagine at the edge of the stage a large wall which separates you from the orchestra; act as if the curtain never rose.

-Diderot, Denis
  Discours sur la poe¤  sie dramatique, introducing the theatrical concept of the'fourth wall'.

Are not your kisses then as filthy, and more, As a worm sucking an envenomed sore? Doth not thy fearful hand in felling quake, As one which gathering flowers, still fears a snake? Is not your last act harsh, and violent, As when a plough a stony ground doth rent?

-Donne,John
c.1595  Elegies, no.8,'The Comparison'.

Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the shadow.

-Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)
  'The Hollow Men'.

Troops always ready to act, my well-filled treasury, and the liveliness of my dispositionöthese were my reasons for making war on MariaTheresa.

-Frederick II, the Great
  Letter to Voltaire.

Motherhood will only be a joyous and responsible human act when women are free to make, with full conscious choice and full human responsibility, the decisions to become mothers.

-Friedan, Betty (Elizabeth) Naomi ne¤  e  Goldstein
  Speech at First National Conference for Repeal of Abortion Laws, Chicago.

Ican't act.Ihaveneveracted. And Ishall neveract.What I do is suspend myaudience's power of judgement till I've finished.

-Hardwicke, Sir Cedric
   Attributed.

The four most dramatic words in the English language: 'Act One, Scene One.'

-Hart, Moss
  Act One.

Ich solle niemals anders verfahren, als so, dass ich auch wollen k o« nne, meine Maxime solle ein allgemeines Gesetz werden. I ought never to act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should become a universal law.

-Kant, Immanuel
  Grundlagen zur Metaphysik der Sitten (Groundwork to a Metaphysic of Morals), ch.1 (translated by H  J Paton).

Handle so, dass du die Menschheit, sowohl in deiner Person, als in der Person eines jeden andern, jederzeit zugleich als Zweck, niemals bloÞ als Mittel brauchst. Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.

-Kant, Immanuel
  Grundlagen zur Metaphysik der Sitten (Groundwork to a Metaphysic of Morals), ch.2 (translated by H  J Paton).

I've had a tough time learning how to act like a Congressman. Today I accidentally spent some of my own money.

-Kennedy,Joseph P(atrick) II
  In Newsweek, 9 Feb.

Creativity in science could be described as the act of putting two and two together to make five.

-Koestler, Arthur
  The Act of Creation.

   To devise is the work of the master, to execute the act of the servant.

-Leonardo daVinci
Treatise on Painting (published1651, translatedby A P McMahon, 1956).

All visible objects, man, are but aspasteboard masks.But in each eventöin the living act, the undoubted deedöthere, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask!

-Melville, Herman
  Captain  Ahab. Moby Dick, ch.36.