David Hare (dramatist)

Sir David Hare in 2018

Sir David Hare (born 5 June 1947) is an English playwright and stage director who has also worked as a screenwriter and film director, winning a BAFTA TV Award for Licking Hitler (1979) and being nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe.

Quotes

• The theatre is the best way of showing the gap between what is said and what is seen to be done, and that is why, ragged and gap-toothed as it is, it has still a far healthier potential than some poorer, abandoned arts.
  • "The Playwright as Historian", The Sunday Times Magazine (26 November 1978.
• The act of writing is the act of discovering what you believe.
  • A Map of the World (1982), cited from Carol Homden, The Plays of David Hare (1995), p. 124.

Misattributed

• A weak mind sinks under prosperity, as well as under adversity. A strong and deep mind has two highest tides – when the moon is at the full, and when there is no moon.
  • Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare Guesses at Truth (London: Macmillan, ([1827-48] 1867) pp. 209–10.
• Children always turn toward the light.
  • Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare Guesses at Truth (London: Macmillan, ([1827-48] 1867) p. 159.
• In oratory the will must predominate.
  • Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare Guesses at Truth (London: Macmillan, ([1827-48] 1867) p. 97.
• None but a fool is always right.
  • Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare Guesses at Truth (London: Macmillan, ([1827-48] 1867) p. 445.
• Nothing is further than Earth from Heaven: nothing is nearer than Heaven to Earth.
  • Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare Guesses at Truth (London: Macmillan, ([1827-48] 1867) p. 563.
• Our poetry in the eighteenth century was prose; our prose in the seventeenth, poetry.
  • Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare Guesses at Truth (London: Macmillan, ([1827-48] 1867) p. 143.
• Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of Nature.
  • Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare Guesses at Truth (London: Macmillan, ([1827-48] 1867) p. 296.
• Purity is the feminine, Truth the masculine, of Honour.
  • Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare Guesses at Truth (London: Macmillan, ([1827-48] 1867) p. 180.
• Smiles are the language of love.
  • Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare Guesses at Truth (London: Macmillan, ([1827-48] 1867) p. 249.
• Some people carry their hearts in their heads; very many carry their heads in their hearts. The difficulty is to keep them apart, and yet both actively working together.
  • Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare Guesses at Truth (London: Macmillan, ([1827-48] 1867) p. 7.
• Sudden resolutions, like the sudden rise of the mercury in the barometer, indicate little else than the changeableness of the weather.
  • Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare Guesses at Truth (London: Macmillan, ([1827-48] 1867) p. 526.
• The virtue of Paganism was strength: the virtue of Christianity is obedience.
  • Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare Guesses at Truth (London: Macmillan, ([1827-48] 1867) p. 1.
• The ultimate tendency of civilization is toward barbarism.
  • Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare Guesses at Truth (London: Macmillan, ([1827-48] 1867) p. 459.
• Thought is the wind, knowledge the sail.
  • Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare Guesses at Truth (London: Macmillan, ([1827-48] 1867) p. 159.
• To those whose god is honour, disgrace alone is sin.
  • Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare Guesses at Truth (London: Macmillan, ([1827-48] 1867) p. 7.