Top 87 Second Act Quotes
#1. Waiting for Godot ... has achieved a theoretical impossibility - a play in which nothing happens, that yet keeps the audience glued to their seats. What's more, since the second act is a subtly different reprise of the first, he has written a play in which nothing happens, twice.
Vivian Mercier
#2. In the first act get your principal character up a tree; in the second act, throw stones at him; in the third, get him down gracefully.
Anonymous
#3. If the history of the American sentence were a John Ford movie, its second act would conclude with the young Ernest Hemingway walking into a saloon, finding an etiolated Henry James slumped at the bar in a haze of indecision, and shooting him dead.
Adam Haslett
#4. Guns never settle anything, I said. They are just a fast curtain to a bad second act
Raymond Chandler
#5. In life, the first act is always exciting but it is the second act - that's where the depth comes in.
Joyce Van Patten
#6. In the first act, you get your hero up a tree. The second act, you throw rocks at him. For the third act, you let him down."- George Abbott
Austin Kleon
#7. The first act is the easiest to plot. The second act is always the hardest to plot. Generally a good, you know, sometimes the third act can be difficult because you can get into a rut in the third act - everybody runs to their Corvette, has a chase, and you catch the bad guy.
Stephen J. Cannell
#8. Real change, eternal change, is when your actions are meant to draw you closer to your Lord. The first act of genuine turning is recognizing that what you have done on your own, what you are capable of doing, is not enough. The second act is acknowledging who you are turning toward.
Davis Bunn
#9. Life can be difficult sometimes, it gets bumpy. What with family and kids and things not going exactly like you planned. But that's what makes it interesting. In life the first act is always exciting. The second act, that is where the depth comes in.
Joyce Van Patten
#10. A good pitch is set up in three acts: The first act is the past, the second act is the present, and the third act is the future.
Austin Kleon
#11. The basic formula of life... SURVIVE. EAT. SHIT. FUCK. BUY A HOUSE and DIE. It's all been scripted. But there's no need to see the second act. You already know how the play ends, don't you?
Andrew Armacost
#12. We live between two worlds; we soar in the atmosphere; we creep upon the soil; we have the aspirations of creators and the propensities of quadrupeds. There can be but one explanation of this fact. We are passing from the animal into a higher form, and the drama of this planet is in its second act.
William Winwood Reade
#13. Shakespeare put no children in his plays for a reason," Sir Godfrey muttered, glaring at Alf and Binnie.
"You're forgetting the Little Prince," Polly reminded him.
"Who he had the good sense to kill off in the second act," snapped Sir Godfrey.
Connie Willis
#14. The best seat in the house often depends on the ballet. For instance, much of the first act of 'The Nutcracker' is domestic and small scale, so it's great to sit up close. But the second act features elaborate scenery and choreography, which are better to observe from a distance.
Robert Gottlieb
#15. When the second act was over Countess Bezukhova rose, turned to the Rostovs' box - her whole bosom completely exposed - beckoned the old count with a gloved finger, and paying no attention to those who had entered her box, began talking to him with an amiable smile.
Leo Tolstoy
#16. You never want your second act or the whole movie to just be this relentless march towards its goal. You want things to take the audience by surprise.
Michael Arndt
#17. I have a whole second act of ARTPOP and I love it.
Lady Gaga
#18. One of the traps or the pitfalls of writing a trilogy - or a triptych, or whatever term you want to use - is that the second book can be a long second act to get you from book one to book three, which borrows all of its energy from the first book.
Justin Cronin
#19. As it turned out, hell wasn't watching the people you love get hurt; it was coming in during the second act, when it was already too late to stop it from happening.
Jodi Picoult
#20. The story of Jesus makes no sense to me. God sent his only son. Why could God only have one son and why would he have to die? It's just bad writing, really. And it's really terrible in about the second act.
Trey Parker
#21. They say there's no second act in American lives. There's something there worth exploring. Giving up an idea of yourself, examining your failure, and seeing if that failure was the system's or yours. What does it mean to not turn out to be the person you want to be?
Scott Rudin
#22. During one performance of 'Les Miserables,' the barricade didn't leave the stage, so we had to actually end up finishing the second act with the barricades on the stage, which was very strange ... doing the love scene on the barricade.
Josh Young
#23. Also, if you watch the film once, there are lots of things that you won't get because there are punch lines in the first act, the setup to which isn't until the second act.
Simon Pegg
#24. Happily ever after never happens in the second act.
Boyd K. Packer
#25. You're not a whore. You're a chick who hasn't exactly grown up with every advantage, and you've learned to use what you've got. You don't do it on purpose. It's second nature. You act girly and helpless and make men think you're harmless.
Jennifer Echols
#26. And yet is not this transitoriness a reminder that challenges us to make the best possible use of each moment of our lives? It certainly is, and hence my imperative: Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now. In
Viktor E. Frankl
#27. We have three ways to act wisely. First by thinking. That's the noblest. Second by imitating. That's the easiest. And third by experience. This is the bitterest.
Anonymous
#28. So live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!
Viktor E. Frankl
#29. In the second training, we develop energy, concentration, and mindfulness. These are the meditative and life tools that enable us to awaken. Without them we simply act out the patterns of our conditioning.
Joseph Goldstein
#30. The first is that much of what we consider valuable in our world arises out of these kinds of lopsided conflicts, because the act of facing overwhelming odds produces greatness and beauty. And second, that we consistently get these kinds of conflicts wrong.
Malcolm Gladwell
#31. Discipline enables you to think first and act second.
Joyce Meyer
#32. In the studio system, things are expected of a film. By the first, second, third act, there's a generic language that comes out of the more commercial system.
Ralph Fiennes
#33. The first part of a good work is the will, the second is vigorous effort in the doing of it. God is the author of both. It is, therefore, robbery from God to arrogate anything to ourselves, either in the will or the act.
John Calvin
#34. The so-called second New Deal of 1935 - including the Works Progress Administration, Social Security and the Wagner Act legalizing union labor - represented an effort to meet the rising voices demanding a more aggressive government approach to the collapse of national prosperity.
Robert Dallek
#35. Bryzgalov isn't just a running comedy act. He's one of the league's most thoughtful players and the fact that he offers the insight he does in his second language is something he'll never get enough credit for.
Ilya Bryzgalov
#36. What we have to do is act as clearly and with as pure motivation as is possible now, and that will sow the seeds for good action maybe in the twenty-second century.
Pico Iyer
#37. That would be stupid." "True. But in keeping with your 'act first, think second' behavioral trend.
Veronica Roth
#38. Katie shrugged. "I took a detour." "Damn it, Katie. You need to be more careful. You're pregnant, remember?" "Just a second ago you were talking about jamming a spyglass up my hoo-ha. Now you're going to act protective?
Ann Charles
#39. If he now failed, this world also would hereafter be redeemed. If he were not the ransom, another would be. Yet nothing was ever repeated. Not a second crucifixion; perhaps-who knows-not even a second Incarnation ... some act of even more appalling love, some glory of yet deeper humility.
C.S. Lewis
#40. Everything could end at any moment. The difference between life and death was one breath, one second, one act. And that meant that life was worth everything, every minute of every day.
Gwenda Bond
#41. Personally there is first: imagination; second: the act of writing - and third: the act/act of vocalizing.
Anne Waldman
#42. She needed a break from worrying about what to say and how to act every second of the day.
Cindi Madsen
#43. Fail to act - and history will remember you as the man who stepped aside and allowed Voldemort a second chance to destroy the world we have tried to rebuild!
J.K. Rowling
#44. As told in Friendship with God, if we simply decided to believe and act as if first, we're all one, and second, life is eternal, it would render virtually everything we've done all our lives pointless.
Neale Donald Walsch
#45. You've got to be on the ball from the minute you step out into that spotlight. You gotta know exactly what you're doing every second on that stage, otherwise the act goes right into the bathroom. It's all over. Good night.
Frank Sinatra
#46. Be proud to act like a normal human being. Keep daylight hours, get a regular job, and mix in the company of people with a fixed sense of right and wrong.
The Abstainer's Handbook (second edition, p. 89)
Matt Haig
#47. You can't smile and act like you love me one second then destroy my world the very next.
J.M. Darhower
#48. Ah, Peter, we who have made the great mistake, how differently we should all act at the second chance. But Solomon was right; there is no second chance, not for most of us. When we reach the window it is lock-out time. The iron bars are up for life.
J.M. Barrie
#49. Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now.
Viktor E. Frankl
#50. I'm down to act a little bit - go on a couple auditions or make one of those three-second cameos with one line.
Charlie Puth
#51. First, the only certainty is that there is no certainty. Second, every decision as a consequence is a matter of weighing probabilities. Third, despite uncertainty we must decide and we must act. And lastly we need to judge decisions not only on the results, but how those decisions were made.
Robert Rubin
#52. The second principle of magic: things which have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each other at a distance after the physical contact has been severed.
James G. Frazer
#53. The railway was part scalpel, part movie camera, slicing the city open, parading its inner workings at fifty frames per second. It was on the S-Bahn that she felt least abandoned, as if the act of travelling turned back the clock, and brought her nearer to the future she had lost.
Philip Sington
#54. It only takes a second to call a girl fat and She'll take a lifetime trying to starve herself.. think before you act.
Harry Styles
#55. Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-old debates about the role of government for all time - but it does require us to act in our time,
Barack Obama
#56. It only takes a second for you to call a girl fat and she will starve herself for the rest of her life. Think before you act.
Harry Styles
#57. With the opening of the second decade of the twentieth century it seemed that the stage was set for the last act in an unquestioned evolutionary drama.
Ralph Adams Cram
#58. it took
losing him
to finally
find
myself.
It took
losing him
a second time
to be sure
of myself.
that
was my
first act
of
self-love.
Amanda Lovelace
#59. Yet the whole preamble of the second authorization act for the Marshall Plan showed the direction Congress was ready to take about breaking down barriers within Europe.
W. Averell Harriman
#60. She clutched him, her fingers digging in like she needed to gather parts of him to act as her own second skin for the rest of her life.
Melina Marchetta
#61. When you're reading, you're laughing and not quite noticing what's happening. One second you're still kind of chuckling, and then all of sudden you're in the third act of the book and in this very dark and claustrophobic place.
Moshe Kasher
#62. Mortification is basic to the act of photographing. The person is mobile, ... then I freeze one moment in his movement, a mere five-hundredth of a second of that person's life-time. That's a very meager or small extract from a life.
August Sander
#63. I started acting in second grade - my first role was in the Thanksgiving play. I was the Indian chasing the turkey. All the other mom's encouraged my mom to get me into acting after that. Also, when I saw 'The Sound of Music' at Music Circus, I knew I wanted to act.
Brie Larson
#64. None are more liable to mistakes than those who act only on second thoughts.
Luc De Clapiers
#65. Commissions suit me. They set limits. Jean Marais dared me to write play in which he would not speak in the first act, would weep for joy in the second and in the last would fall backward down a flight of stairs.
Jean Cocteau
#66. For my new book 'Pirate Hunters', I follow John Chatterton and John Mattera, two world-class scuba divers, who teach themselves to think and act as pirates while searching for what would be only the second pirate ship ever found and positively identified.
Robert Kurson
#67. The first evil choice or act is linked to the second; and each one to the one that follows, both by the tendency of our evil nature and by the power of habit, which holds us as by a destiny
Tryon Edwards
#68. In life and business, there are two cardinal sins. The first is to act precipitously without thought and the second is to not act at all.
Carl Icahn
#69. I could take you out in a second," she threatens.
If he's concerned, he doesn't show it. "I know."
Somehow he also knows that she won't do it - that the first time was just a reflex. If she were to hurt him a second time, though, it would be a conscious act. It would be by choice.
Neal Shusterman
#70. The second rector of [St. John's in] Providence was blown out of church one Sunday by 'an extraordinary gust of wind,' and the people, welcoming this ejection as an act of heaven, refused to let him in again.
George Hodges
#71. We have never yet had a labor Government that knew what taking power really means; they always act like second-class citizens.
Dora Russell
#72. Blood drummed in her ears and adrenaline coursed through her veins, driving her to move. To act. Her hands trembled against his chest.
Time vanished out from beneath her feet, one accelerating second at a time.
G.S. Jennsen
#73. Onstage, there's no hiding; you either can or can't act. There's no second take.
Anna Friel
#74. I had, like, two goals in my career: One was to try to get into 'Second City.' When I moved to Chicago, my goal was to try to work at 'Second City.' And beyond that, my goal was to make enough money as an actor to not do anything else but act, not have to go and wait tables again.
Steve Carell
#76. I paused in the act of opening the door and looked at him with what were probably cartoon-wide eyes. "Wait a second," I said. "So, you're best friends with a hot vampire chick who likes leather."
"Yeah."
"And together, you fight crime?" I couldn't help it. I cracked up.
Rachel Caine
#77. I don't think I'm an instantaneous act the whole world will love in one second - but that's how I've felt about bands I love.
Marina And The Diamonds
#78. After 10 years TNA talent still have an inferiority complex. If you don't think that you work for the BEST COMPANY EVER then nobody else will! As a performer you hav to act and project that where you work is the pinnacle of competition! If not then the whole place just seems second rate.
Chris Jericho
#79. It's always a problem, getting the curtain in at the end of the first act; having enough of a resolve so that you can bring the curtain in and then opening the show a second time is a little bizarre as a tradition. I've always preferred to go straight through.
Twyla Tharp
#80. Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!50
Alex Pattakos
#81. It was like a trapeze act: How could you really tell at what second the acrobat pushed away, at what moment the anchor let go? You couldn't, and that was that. You and your deductions from the outcomeL a successful landing or a spiraling fall.
Jodi Picoult
#82. There are four principles we need to maintain: First, read the Word of God. Second, consume the Word of God until it consumes you. Third believe the Word of God. Fourth, act on the Word.
Smith Wigglesworth
#83. A sudden squawked command caused everyone within earshot to act for a split second as if they were shaking invisible martinis
Tom Robbins
#84. The importance of the Beats is twofold: first, they act out a critique of the organized system that everybody in some sense agrees with. But second-and more important in the long run-they are a kind of major pilot study of the use of leisure in an economy of abundance.
Paul Goodman
#85. When this life ends, I will be absorbed back into you. I have come forth from you . You are all good and you know all that there is. So please act in me and through me at every moment and every second. Let me be but an extension of your being. Teach me how to live and love selflessly, at all times.
Frederick Lenz
#86. Remorse.
Never yield to remorse, but at once tell yourself: remorse would simply mean adding to the first act of stupidity a second.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#87. The best time to act on this was decades ago. The second best time is now.
David Brin
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