A China man of the T'ang Dynasty—and, by which definition, a philosopher—dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security.

— Tom Stoppard

Age is a high price to pay for maturity.

— Tom Stoppard

Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.

— Tom Stoppard

A healthy attitude is contagious but don't wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier.

— Tom Stoppard

A lesson in folly is worth two in wisdom.

— Tom Stoppard

Although I don't examine myself in this respect, I would say, off the top of my head, that I've come to acknowledge my Richness more as I get older.

— Tom Stoppard

A man breaking his journey between one place and another at a third place of no name, character, population or significance, sees a unicorn cross his path and disappear. That in itself is startling, but there are precedents for mystical encounters of various kinds, or to be less extreme, a choice of persuasions to put it down to fancy; until--"My God," says a second man, "I must be dreaming, I thought I saw a unicorn." At which point, a dimension is added that makes the experience as alarming as it will ever be. A third witness, you understand, adds no further dimension but only spreads it thinner, and a fourth thinner still, and the more witnesses there are the thinners it gets and the more reasonable it becomes until it is as thin as reality, the name we give to the common experience... "Look, look!" recites the crowd. "A horse with an arrow in its forehead! It must have been mistaken for a deer.

— Tom Stoppard

A man speaking sense to himself is no madder than a man speaking nonsense not to himself.

— Tom Stoppard

An artist is the magician put among men to gratify--capriciously--their urge for immortality. The temples are built and brought down around him, continuously and contiguously, from Troy to the fields of Flanders. If there is any meaning in any of it, it is in what survives as art, yes even in the celebration of tyrants, yes even in the celebration of nonentities. What now of the Trojan War if it had been passed over by the artist's touch? Dust. A forgotten expedition prompted by Greek merchants looking for new markets. A minor redistribution of broken pots. But it is we who stand enriched, by a tale of heroes, of a golden apple, a wooden horse, a face that launched a thousand ships--and above all, of Ulysses, the wanderer, the most human, the most complete of all heroes--husband, father, son, lover, farmer, soldier, pacifist, politician, inventor and adventurer...

— Tom Stoppard

As Socrates so philosophically put it, since we don't know what death is, it is illogical to fear it.

— Tom Stoppard