Franklin Theatre Quotes

Most people's lives were stories with mysterious endings. Mine was a story with a beginning I could never make sense of. It was like fifty different unrelated strands I couldn't weave into a solid crystal. ~ Lindsay A. Franklin

Human felicity is produced not as much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen as by little advantages that occur every day. ~ Benjamin Franklin

All that is within me cries out to go back to my home on the Hudson River ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

She had a quality he had never known- she WAS quality. ~ Ariana Franklin

The rapid progress of the sciences makes me sorry, at times, that I was born so soon. Imagine the power that man will have over matter, a few hundred years from now. We may learn how to remove gravity from large masses, and float them over great distances. Agriculture will double its produce with less labor. All diseases will surely be cured ... even old age. If only the moral sciences could be improved as well. Perhaps men would cease to be wolves to one another ... and human beings could learn to be human. ~ Benjamin Franklin

'Tis true there is much to be done, ... but stick to it steadily, and you will see great effects, for constant dropping wears away stones ... and little strokes fell great oaks, as Poor Richard says ... ~ Benjamin Franklin

From there, I tried out for a community theatre play, joined an improv group ... it all started opening up. ~ Kevin James

This was, therefore, the first house I was in, or slept in, in Philadelphia. ~ Benjamin Franklin

When unspeakable violence is enacted upon innocents, say, in a school or movie theatre, and the survivors and the families of the victims, in the throes of pain and anguish, want to ask, "Why did this happen?," "How did this happen?," and "What can we do to prevent this from happening again?," and one of the areas they (still we) focus their scrutiny is that of the highly efficient weapons of warfare that are casually available to us citizens of the United States, then we frightened gun owners have the chance to be human and say, "Okay, this is a horrible tragedy. Let's open up a conversation here." Instead, I'm surmising, out of fear, we throw up our defenses and behave in a very confrontational way toward such a conversation , citing the Second Amendment as the ultimate protection of our rights, no matter how ridiculously murderous the firearm, which, unfortunately, makes us look like dicks. ~ Nick Offerman

Pearl Harbor Address to the Nation
Delivered on December 8, 1941
Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the Senate, and of the House of Representatives:
Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific.
Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu, the Japanese ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. And while this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or of armed attack.
It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time, the Japanese government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.
The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition, American shi ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievious ones. ~ Benjamin Franklin

I coach young people. I have a group called BTP - Broadway Theatre Project. ~ Ben Vereen

I sometimes think that theatre is a torture. ~ Juliet Stevenson

Dorian, Dorian," she cried, "before I knew you, acting was the one reality of my life. It was only in the theatre that I lived. I thought that it was all true. I was Rosalind one night and Portia the other. The joy of Beatrice was my joy, and the sorrows of Cordelia were mine also. I believed in everything. The common people who acted with me seemed to me to be godlike. The painted scenes were my world. I knew nothing but shadows, and I thought them real. You came - oh, my beautiful love! - and you freed my soul from prison. You taught me what reality really is. To-night, for the first time in my life, I saw through the hollowness, the sham, the silliness of the empty pageant in which I had always played. To-night, for the first time, I became conscious that the Romeo was hideous, and old, and painted, that the moonlight in the orchard was false, that the scenery was vulgar, and that the words I had to speak were unreal, were not my words, were not what I wanted to say. You had brought me something higher, something of which all art is but a reflection. ~ Oscar Wilde

Let thy maid servant be faithful, strong, and homely. ~ Benjamin Franklin

To imagine myself in different ways comes from my beginnings in the theatre. People are more accepting when you go 'apparently', 'wildly' afield from who you are or where you were brought up. ~ Meryl Streep

In New England they once thought blackbirds useless, and mischievous to the corn. They made efforts to destroy them. The consequence was, the blackbirds were diminished; but a kind of worm, which devoured their grass, and which the blackbirds used to feed on, increased prodigiously; then, finding their loss in grass much greater than their saving in corn, they wished again for their blackbirds. ~ Benjamin Franklin

The best way to help the poor is to make them uncomfortable in their own poverty. ~ Benjamin Franklin

I love directing. It's something I started doing in theatre when I was in university in Chicago and I started a theatre company right out of college and was directing for many years. ~ David Schwimmer

Love well, whip well. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Being in L.A., it was really hard to find a country writer and producer. I eventually - years of searching - found this guy, Dan Franklin. He's an incredible musician and producer. We write so well together ... It's been a really cool experience. ~ Sasha Pieterse

If you wouldn't live long, live well; for folly and wickedness shorten life. ~ Benjamin Franklin

You cannot separate the old furniture from the memories and the memories from the old furniture! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

On Rossini's 'The Barber of Seville' - "Much has been written about the fiasco of the opera's first night on 20 February 1816, most of it true: the mockery of Rossini's Spanish-style hazel jacket, the rowdy animosity of the Paisiello lobby, the jeering and the catcalls, as one mishap succeeded another. Basilio sang his 'Calumny' aria with a bloodied nose after tripping over a trap door; then during the act 1 finale, a cat wandered onstage, declined to leave, and was forcibly flung into the wings. According to the Rosina, Gertrude Righetti Giorgi, Rossini left the theatre 'as though he had been an indifferent onlooker'... The second performance was a triumph, though Rossini was not there to witness it. He spent the evening pacing his room, imagining the opera's progress scene by scene. He retired early, only to be roused by a glow of torches and uproar in the street. Fearing that a mob was about to set fire to the building, he took refuge in a stable block. Garcia tried to summon him to acknowledge the adulation. 'F***' their bravos!' was Rossini's blunt rejoinder. 'I'm not coming out'. ~ Richard Osborne

I feel like theatre gives me the grounding, and keeps me alive, basically. Film gives me the thrill, and it's like a one night stand. But I do enjoy being around people who love it so much. ~ Marisa Tomei

As Benjamin Franklin said, 'Those things that hurt, instruct.' It is for this reason that wise people learn not to dread but actually to welcome problems and actually to welcome the pain of problems. ~ M. Scott Peck

Are we going to take the hands of the federal government completely off any effort to adjust the growing of national crops, and go right straight back to the old principle that every farmer is a lord of his own farm and can do anything he wants, raise anything, any old time, in any quantity, and sell any time he wants? ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

The Theatre of the Absurd ... can be seen as the reflection of what seems to be the attitude most genuinely representative of our own time. The hallmark of this attitude is its sense that the certitudes and unshakable basic assumptions of former ages have been swept away, that they have been tested and found wanting, that they have been discredited as cheap and somewhat childish illusions. ~ Martin Esslin

He is like light and wisdom is his Gabriel. ~ Franklin D. Lewis

I have a terrific pain in the back of my head. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt