Quotes by Irish Authors - Page 26

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the
Edmund Burke
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams
W.B. Yeats
Here we go again. Always a few drinks, but sometimes even sober, we play the unhappiness game; endlessly round and round. Ding dong. Tighter and tighter. On and on. Push me pull you. Come here and i'll tell you how much i hate you. Hang on a minute while i leave you. All the while we know we are missing the point, whatever the point used to be.
Anne Enright
An artist must paint not simply surface light, but what is inside, what he sees within his subject
Frank Wynne
Love and freedom are such hideous words. So many cruelties have been done in their name.
Joseph O'Connor
The weak may not be admired and hero-worshipped; but they are by no means disliked or shunned; and they never seem to have the least difficulty in marrying people who are too good for them. They may fail in emergencies; but life is not one long emergency: it is mostly a string of situations for which no exceptional strength is needed, and with which even rather weak people can cope if they have a stronger partner to help them out.
George Bernard Shaw
We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.
W.B. Yeats
I'm only telling you on the truth," he said. "If you can't stand the truth, don't ask for it.
Colum McCann
Clearly, imagining cannot be expected to mean exactly the same thing today as it did in the Middle Ages or antiquity. For one thing, Aristotle and Aquinas never watched television.
Richard Kearney
She lives in the poetry she cannot write.
Oscar Wilde
You convinced me that you're a good kisser, that doesn't mean you like me." "I'm here pretending to be your boyfriend with the possibility of getting zero benefits from you. Trust me kitten, I like you. I like you a whole lottle, remember?
L.A. Casey
If the poets offered us nothing more than another make-believe world, they would be mere sellers of drugs or, at best, sweetmeats.
Robert Lynd
Only the brave know how to forgive. ... A coward never forgave it is not in his nature.
Laurence Sterne
People need a moral code, to help them make decisions. All this bio-yogurt virtue and financial self-righteousness are just filling the gap in the market. But the problem is that it's all backwards. It's not that you do the right thing and hope it pays off; the morally right thing is by definition the thing that gives the biggest payoff.
Tana French
Our life is made up of time; our days are measured in hours, our pay measured by those hours, our knowledge is measured by years. We grab a few quick minutes in our busy day to have a coffee break. We rush back to our desks, we watch the clock, we live by appointments. And yet your time eventually runs out and you wonder in your heart of hearts if those seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years and decades were being spent the best way they possibly could. In other words, if you could change anything, would you?
Cecelia Ahern
Great wits jump
Laurence Sterne
Jealousy is no more than feeling alone against smiling enemies.
Elizabeth Bowen
So how long have you been together? Two months?''Five.''Five? Jesus, Steve, you might as well get married. I should buy a hat.''Don't. They give away your Spock ears.'She laughed. 'This is the Romanian girl?''Croatian.''Right. She's a painter?''Photographer.''Right.' She studied him.'What?' he laughed self-consciously as though he was a twelve-year-old boy who'd just been caught with his first girlfriend.'Nothing.''Come on.''I don't know Steve,' she cut into her meat, 'you've changed. You no longer write about Victoria Beckham and you have a girlfriend. I think...''You think what?''I don't know, I might be jumping the gun here, but I think there's a possibility you might not be gay after all.'A chip was hurled at her head.
Cecelia Ahern
The mystery of esthetic like that of material creation is accomplished. The artist, like the god of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.
James Joyce
Of the things we fashioned for them that they might be comforted, dawn is the one that works.
John Banville
It is not those who can inflict the most but those who can endure the most who will conquer.
Terence MacSwiney
How flat all sounds are at the seaside, flat and yet emphatic, like the sound of gunshots heard at a distance.
John Banville
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw
I am afraid of everybody else's secrets
Moïra Fowley-Doyle
A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.
George Moore
I know what other people think about me,” Rusty told her. “ ‘That Rusty,’ they say. ‘Charming and handsome,’ they say first, of course—they’re not blind. Then they add, ‘All the ambition and drive of a chocolate sundae.’
Sarah Rees Brennan
Dragon kind was no less cruel than mankind. The Dragon, at least, acted from bestial need rather than bestial greed.”~ A thought by Lessa ~
Anne McCaffrey
It is better to be tied to any thorny bush than to be with a cross man.
Augusta Gregory
It was an uncomfortable feeling, staring into the darkest moments of someone’s soul without them knowing.
Catherine Doyle
The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.
Oscar Wilde
Her past is behind her, her future is of little concern. She moves towards the grave, at her own speed.
Anne Enright
The newspapers! Sir, they are the most villainous — licentious — abominable — infernal — Not that I ever read them — no — I make it a rule never to look into a newspaper.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Hello, IT... Have you tried turning it off and on again?... OK, well, the button on the side. Is it glowing?... Yeah, you need to turn it on.... Err, the button turns it on.... Yeah, you do know how a button works, don't you?... No, not on clothes... I'm sorry, are you from the past?
Graham Linehan
Spontaneity is a meticulously prepared art
Oscar Wilde
A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.
George Bernard Shaw
If you really have to get shot, Belfast is one of the best places to do it. After twenty years of the Troubles, and after thousands of assassination attempts and punishment shootings, Belfast has trained many of the best gunshot-trauma surgeons in the world.
Adrian McKinty
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
John Philpot Curran
I love Prada. Not so much the clothes, which are for malnourished thirteen-year-olds, but I covet, with covety covetousness, the shoes and handbags. Like, I LOVE them. If I was given a choice between world peace and a Prada handbag, I'd dither. (I'm not proud of this, I'm only saying.)
Marian Keyes
Poets are the sense, philosophers­­ the intelligence­­ of humanity.
Samuel Beckett
Don't be afraid to make corrections," Picchu said. "Don't be afraid to lend a hand." She fell silent, seeming to think for a moment. "And don't look down.
Diane Duane
The novel cannot submit to authority.
Julian Gough
All empty souls tend to extreme opinion.
William Butler Yeats
You do not have to be alone. The world never inflicts loneliness upon us. That is something we choose or reject by ourselves.
Darren Shan
I am sick of women who love one. Women who hate one are much more interesting.
Oscar Wilde
A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
Oscar Wilde
I hardly think that any Socialist, nowadays, would seriously propose that an inspector should call every morning at each house to see that each citizen rose up and did manual labour for eight hours.
Oscar Wilde
I am so glad that you have never done anything, never carved a statue, or painted a picture, or produced anything outside of yourself! Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.
Oscar Wilde
Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.
Mary Harris Jones
And there are moments that I would like to know what might have happened if it hadn't happened, and why it happened the way it did, and what it might have taken to prevent it from happening.
Colum McCann
If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton you may as well make it dance.
George Bernard Shaw
Time is more precious than gold, more precious than diamonds, more precious than oil or any valuable treasures. It is time that we do not have enough of; it is time that causes the war within our hearts, and so we must spend it wisely.
Cecelia Ahern
How I adored to draw as a child, a teen; all my life before I began to try and shape a career out of it.
Sara Baume
I do the splits perfectly in PE. I lose half a pound in two days. I get the spinach and pig-meat frittata from the lo-carb section for lunch. And no-one else knows. I mentally construct a MyFace status, polishing the memories carefully until they shine. The need to record my life is as fundamental as my need to breathe. Without MyFace, I'm floating. I have nothing to anchor me down, to prove I exist.
Louise O'Neill
The solid earth sways like the treacherous sea beneath the feet of men and spirits alike when the innocent are slain in the name of law, and their wrongs are undone by slandering the pure of heart.
George Bernard Shaw
Wow," she said. "It's like you're teaching me something and being all wise.""You are not easy to get along with," Skulduggery said.
Derek Landy
It would kill the past, and when that was dead, he would be free.
Oscar Wilde
She began stroking my ankles. I considered kicking her in the cunt.
Samuel Beckett
What was youth at best? A green, an unripe time, a time of shallow moods, and sickly thoughts.
Oscar Wilde
The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence.
Oscar Wilde
Never seen the sea! How could anyone not have seen the sea? Surely the sea must somehow belong to the happiness of every child.
Iris Murdoch