Self-pity in its early stage is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.

-Angelou, Maya originally MayaJohnson
  Gather Together In My Name, ch.6.

Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole: The mellow glory of the Attic stage; Singer of sweet Colonus, and its child.

-Arnold, Matthew
  Of Sophocles. The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems,'To a Friend'.

Where's the stage and what's the play?

-Booth,Junius Brutus
Attributed, on being found drunk backstage shortly before making his first entrance.

But, thanks to wine-less and democracy, We've still our stage where truth calls spade a spade!

-Browning, Robert
  'Aristophanes' Apology', stanza1.

David, you are an actor everywhere but upon the stage.

-Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of
Attributed, in conversation with the actor David Garrick.

Don't put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington, Don't put your daughter on the stage.

-Coward, Sir Noe«  l Peirce
  'Mrs Worthington' (song).

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'.

We get richer and richer in filthier and filthier communities until we reach a final stage of affluent miseryöa crocus on a garbage heap.

-Gardner,JohnWilliam
  In the NewYork Times, 9 Oct.

On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting; 'Twas only that when he was off he was acting.

-Goldsmith, Oliver
  Of Garrick. Retaliation, l.101^2.

A play for me never really takes on an aspect of reality until it has left the dryair of the study and begins to sniff the musty breezes of a bare stage.

-Hart, Moss
  Act One.

The stage but echoes back the public voice. The drama's laws the drama's patrons give, For we, who live to please, must please to live.

-Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson
  Prologue, written for David Garrick on the occasion of the opening of his management of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

   Well, I will scourge those apes, And to these courteous eyes oppose a mirror, As large as is the stage whereon we act; Where they shall see the time's deformity Anatomised in every nerve, and sinew, With constant courage, and contempt of fear.

-Jonson, Ben
  Every Man out of His Humour, Induction.

Soul of the Age! The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!

-Jonson, Ben
  'To the Memory of My Beloved,  the  Author, Mr. William Shakespeare, and What He Hath Left Us'.

Awake my soul, and with the sun Thy daily stage of duty run.

-Ken,Thomas
  Manual of Prayers for the use of the Scholars of  Winchester College.

Une ample Come¤  die a'   cent actes divers, Et dont la sce'  ne est l'Univers. A grand comedy in one hundred different acts, On the stage of the universe.

-La Fontaine,Jean de
  Fables, pt.5, no.1,'Le bu"   cheron et Mercure'.

When the final curtain comes down, it's time to get off the stage.

-Major,John
  Outside10 Downing Street on 2 May, leaving office as Prime Minister and announcing that he would resign as Party Leader. In The Guardian, 3 May.

   The United Nations cannot do anything, and never could. It is not an animate entity or agent. It is a place, a stage, a forum and a shrine†a place to which powerful people can repair when they are fearful about the course on which their own rhetoric seems to be propelling them.

-Oates,Joyce Carol
  In New Republic, 4 Nov.

Name me one character in literature or drama who can't be described as neurotic† We wouldn't want to know the people we get to see on the stage. How would you like to have Medea for dinner? Or Macbeth slurping your soup? Or Oedipus with his bloody, blinded eyes dripping all over your tablecloth?

-Page, Geraldine
Attributed.

How often are we to die before we go quite off this stage? Inevery friend we losea part ofourselves, and the best part.

-Pope, Alexander
  Letter to Swift, 5 Dec.

It is only in science, I find, that we can get outside ourselves. It's realistic, and to a great degree verifiable, and it has this tremendous stage on which it plays. I have the same feelingöto a certain degreeöabout some religious expressions†but only to a certain degree. For me, the proper study of mankind is science, which also means that the proper study of mankind is man.

-Rabi, Isidor Isaac
Quoted inJeremy Bernstein Experiencing Science (1978).