Quotes by Irish Authors - Page 25

God spoke to you by so many voices but you would not hear.
James Joyce
An untied shoelace can be dangerous,' he said.'I could have tripped.'She stared at him. A moment dragged by.'I'm joking,' he said at last.She relaxed. 'Really?''Absolutely. I would never have tripped. I'm far too graceful.
Derek Landy
There is no use indicting words, they are no shoddier than what they peddle.
Samuel Beckett
Those who have nothing give everything and those who have everything give nothing.
Derek Bell
I finished my first book seventy-six years ago. I offered it to every publisher on the English-speaking earth I had ever heard of. Their refusals were unanimous: and it did not get into print until, fifty years later; publishers would publish anything that had my name on it.
George Bernard Shaw
WinterThe season between autumn and spring, comprising in the Northern Hemisphere the coldest months of the year: December, January and February.A period of inactivity or decay.
Cecelia Ahern
people often ignore the misfortune of others, you see. The world is a heartless place but it's not always because they don't care. It's sometimes because the are embarrassed, or because they don't know what to say, or because they simply cannot beat ro look into the eyes of someone who is suffering.
Sarah Moore Fitzgerald
Florence Farr once said to me "If we could say to ourselves with sincerity 'this passing moment is as good as any I shall ever know ' we could die upon the instant and be united with God."
William Butler Yeats
Your representative owes you not his industry only but his judgement and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
Edmund Burke
Yes, we'll have to put a stop to this bookworming. No future in that.
Molly Keane
Memory, I must suppose, if it is neglected becomes like a box room, or a lumber room in an old house, the contents jumbled about, maybe not only from neglect but also from too much haphazard searching in them, and things to boot thrown in that don't belong there.
Sebastian Barry
The doctors found out that Bunbury could not live, that is what I mean - so Bunbury died.He seems to have had great confidence in the opinion of his physicians. I am glad, however, that he made up his mind at the last to some definite course of action, and acted under proper medical advice.
Oscar Wilde
To begin with, I dined there on Monday, and once a week is quite enough to dine with one's own relations.
Oscar Wilde
You got all that from how they are looking at each other?” Ryder questioned.I glanced at him. “You didn’t get that from how they’re lookin’ at each other?”He rubbed his temples. “This is a woman thing.”“A woman thing?”“Yeah,” Ryder said. “You all have a sixth sense about shit like this so I’m just rolling with it.”I snorted. “That’s the smartest thing you’ve said all day.
L.A. Casey
I felt Alec's glare so I turned to look at him and smiled when I found him all but drilling holes into me with his eyes."If looks could kill, I'd be dead," I joked."My pretty eyes won't harm you, don't worry."Conceited much?"Did you just call your own eyes pretty?"Alec devilishly grinned then and it made me slightly uneasy."No, you said I have pretty eyes."Was he high?"Are you in your right mind? I have never said you have pretty eyes-""Yes, you have. Right before you fell asleep. You said I have pretty eyes."I felt my face heat up.It was the shite he gave me to knock me out that said that, not me!"Did I say anythin' else?" I murmured.Alec leaned in close to me and whispered is a slow, seductive voice, "You said you like my voice, my abs, and my ass."I audibly gasped. "I did not!"Alec snickered. "You did."I was mortified, absolutely mortified!"I hate you right now.
L.A. Casey
If we all got fed up at the same time, which could happen coming on evening, we would all sit down and Mick would sign a song. We learned many songs while setting spuds and many a story was told, imaginary or otherwise. We understood well the story of the Gobán Saor, an old Irish legend. The Gobán Saor ruled a large kingdom which he wanted to leave to the cleverest of his three sons. One day, he took his eldest son on a long journey and after some time walking he said: "Son, shorten the road for me."The son was totally at a loss as to how to help his father, so they returned home. The following day the Gobán Saor took his second son, and again the same thing happened. On the third day he took his youngest son and after they had travelled some distance he said once more: "Son, shorten the road for me."The youngest son immediately began to tell his father a story that was long and interesting, and they became so engrossed in the tale that they never noticed the length of the journey. In our lives, Mick was the Gobán Saor's youngest son.
Alice Taylor
To have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact talk to every woman as if you loved her and to every man as if he bored you.
Oscar Wilde
At moments when life is at its worst there are two things you can do: 1.) break down,lose hope and refuse to go on while lying face down on the ground banging your fists and kicking your legs, or 2.) laugh. Bobby and I did the latter.
Cecelia Ahern
As soon as she says this, I realize she is just like everyone else, and wish I was back at home so that all the things I do not understand could be the same as they always are.
Claire Keegan
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
Oscar Wilde
There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.
Brendan Behan
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life.
George Bernard Shaw
You know,” he says, voice still low.“I have had nothing but trouble since you walked into my life.” “I’d walk straight back out of it if only you’d let me.
L.H. Cosway
She had been a teenager once, and she knew that, despite the apparent contradictions, a person's teenage years lasted well into their fifties.
Derek Landy
The back windows looked out over the fields, then the Atlantic, maybe a hundred yards away. Actually, I'm just making that bit up. I had no idea how far away the sea was. Only men could do things like that. "Half a mile." "Fifty yards." Giving directions, that sort of thing. I could look at a woman and say "Thirty-six C." Or "Let's try it in the next size up." But I had no idea how far away Tim's sea was except that I wouldn't want to walk to it in high heels.
Marian Keyes
A pity to survive night flights over St. Georges Channel only to crack my skull falling from a ladder.
Eoin Colfer
Because of course, for every revelation of weakness, there had to be an equal and opposite show of strength.
Jane Casey
It's important to be heroic ambitious productive efficient creative and progressive but these qualities don't necessarily nurture the soul. The soul has different concerns of equal value: downtime for reflection conversation and reverie beauty that is captivating and pleasuring relatedness to the environs and to people and any animal's rhythm of rest and activity.
Thomas Moore
I guess no one can be painted with just one brush. There is light and shade in all of us, pain and hardship, and some of us rise from it while others are darkened by it.
Catherine Doyle
Wearing that? Wouldn't you fancy a shapeless cardigan instead? You rock a shapeless cardigan, honey.
Sarah Rees Brennan
Education is an admirable thing but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
Oscar Wilde
Why be broken when you can be gold?
Sarah Rees Brennan
Rather he consoled himself with the fact that, in the real world, when he looked closely into the darkness he might find the presence of a light, damaged and bruised, but a little light all the same.
Colum McCann
From the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence over me. I was dominated, soul brain and power.
Oscar Wilde
I've never met a politician who didn't deserve to be tossed into a pit full of Kallin," Beranabus grunts.
Darren Shan
We also serve who only punctuate.
Brian Moore
As it is with the love of the body, so with the friendship of the mind, the full is only reached by admittance to the most retired places.
Samuel Beckett
It was extremely difficult to keep up any pace over the rocks since they were so unpredictable and devoid of reason. Their senselessness had never so much impressed me.
Iris Murdoch
I have lived to see that being seventeen is no protection against becoming seventy, but to know this needs the experience of a lifetime, for no imagination copes with it.
Lord Dunsany
Fantasy is a reaction to the constraints of reality.
Stewart Stafford
I must confess that most modern mysticism seems to me to be simply a method of imparting useless knowledge in a form that no one can understand
Oscar Wilde
If she had hurt me, I could have forgiven her without even having to think about it; but I couldn't forgive her for being hurt.
Tana French
The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.
George Bernard Shaw
There are some sufferings that we seem as a creature to forget, or we would never survive as a creature among all the other creatures.
Sebastian Barry
Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.
Malachy McCourt
You told me you had destroyed it.""I was wrong. It has destroyed me.
Oscar Wilde
My fiftieth year had come and gone,I sat, a solitary man,In a crowded London shop,An open book and empty cupOn the marble table-top.While on the shop and street I gazedMy body of a sudden blazed;And twenty minutes more or lessIt seemed, so great my happiness,That I was blessed and could bless.
W.B. Yeats
At church with meek and unaffected grace His looks adorn'd the venerable place Truth from his lips prevail'd with double sway And fools who came to scoff remain'd to pray.
Oliver Goldsmith
The prosecutors squarely confronted the grisly results of abortion. And they discovered that nobody really wanted to talk about it. In fact, they learned first hand how blinkered the medical profession could be when it came to abortion. Among the unpleasant surprises they encountered early on in the investigation was the nearly universal unwillingness of doctors to help them. Hardly anyone wanted to talk. A few were sympathetic but balked at testifying. Many more weren’t so kind. Medical professionals didn’t want to contribute to any official proceeding that might shine a negative light on abortion. The prosecutors were encountering the same reluctance to speak up and do the morally and ethically right thing that had allowed Gosnell to continue killing for years.
Ann McElhinney
The artist is the creator of beautiful things.    To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.      The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
Oscar Wilde
The thought of two thousand people crunching celery at the same time horrified me.
George Bernard Shaw
...I don't ever want to feel that way. Feel as if there are no surprises left. The surprises make life worth living. Expecting nothing, accepting it all. Accepting isn't the right word. ACKNOWLEDGING it all. I suppose I'll just try to figure it out as I go or at least try to understand it. Or f***, just think about it. I'll face whatever comes my way...
John O'Callaghan
The time I've lost in wooing In watching and pursuing The light that lies In woman's eyes Has been my heart's undoing.
George Moore
And he gave it for his opinion that whoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before would deserve better of mankind and do more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together.
Jonathan Swift
You can't hang around waiting for somebody else to pull your strings. Destiny's what you make of it. You have to face whatever life throws at you. And if it throws more than you'd like, more than you think you can handle? Well then you just have to find the heroism within yourself and play out the hand you've been dealt. The universe never sets a challenge that can't be met. You just need to believe in yourself in order to find the strength to face it.
Darren Shan
You need to make a decision - are you are an imitator or an innovator?
Stewart Stafford
And what else could we have come here for, except to sense these tiny victories? Not the big victories that crush and kill the victor. Not the wars and civil ructions, but the saving grace of a Hollandaise sauce that has escaped all the possibilities of culinary disaster and is being spread like a yellow prayer on a plump cod steak - victoriously.
Sebastian Barry
The Mother Of GodThe threefold terror of love; a fallen flareThrough the hollow of an ear;Wings beating about the room;The terror of all terrors that I boreThe Heavens in my womb.Had I not found content among the showsEvery common woman knows,Chimney corner, garden walk,Or rocky cistern where we tread the clothesAnd gather all the talk?What is this flesh I purchased with my pains,This fallen star my milk sustains,This love that makes my heart's blood stopOr strikes a sudden chill into my bonesAnd bids my hair stand up?
W.B. Yeats
The workshop door opened and Skulduggery emerged. "Ryan," he said, "stop leaning on my car.
Derek Landy
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.
Oscar Wilde