Quotes by Irish Authors - Page 31

A sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.
Oscar Wilde
Here a tower shining brightOnce stood gleaming in the nightWhere now There's just the rubble in the holefrom "White City
Shane MacGowan
There is indeed a great deal of futility amongst the human race which we do not commonly see, for it all forms part of our illusion; but let a man be much annoyed by something that others do, so that he is separated from them and has to leave them, and looks back at what they are doing, and he'll see at once all manner of whimsical absurdities that he had not noticed before; and Ramon Alonzo in the shade of his oak, waiting for the noon to go by, grew very contemptuous of the attitude that the world took up towards shadows.
Lord Dunsany
A small amount of good literature can often teach more about the inner life than volumes of psychology.
Thomas Moore
Early morning: set off at dawn. Travel round in front of the sun, steal a day's march on him. Keep it up for ever never grow a day older technically.
James Joyce
A man [Joyce] whose earliest stories appeared next to the manure prices in the Irish Homestead knew that columns of prose, like columns of shit, could both recultivate the earth.
Declan Kiberd
I know with unqualified certainty that I want to die. But I also know with equivalent certainty that I won't do anything about it. That I will only remain here and wait for death to indulge me.
Sara Baume
Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.
Oscar Wilde
We can all have plenty of lives, but there are limits. You never can tell what they are.
Colm Tóibín
Chance wanting to defend her grandfather, but not about to leave the library, dustysafe sanctuary of shelves and glass cases and the musty smell of all the books, the door locked from the inside against birdnervous aunts who thought maybe a few slabs of smoked ham and a spoonful of mashed potatoes would make everything better, would make anything right again.
Caitlín R. Kiernan
I don't regret any of the decisions I've made in my life because with every choice I make, I learn something new.
Siva Kaneswaren
When my father first took me to Ennis Library I went down among the shelves and felt company, not only the company of writers, but the readers too, because they had lifted and opened and read these books. The books were worn in a way they can only get worn by hands and eyes and minds
Niall Williams
Artemis: (shocked) Why, Doctor? This is a sensitive area. For all you know I could be suffering from depression. Doctor Po: I suppose you could. Is that the case? Artemis: (head in hands) It's my mother, Doctor. Doctor Po: Yes? Artemis: My mother, she... Doctor Po: Your mother, yes? Artemis: She forces me to endure this ridiculous therapy when the school's so-called counsellors are little better than misguided do-gooders with degrees.
Eoin Colfer
No man fully capable of his own language ever masters another.
George Bernard Shaw
He rose without a friend and sat down without an enemy.
Henry Grattan
But nowadays I feel guilty that I am granted the immunity of the artistically gifted, having never actually achieved anything to prove myself worthy.
Sara Baume
The culture of the Epic Fail, in its rituals of comic sacrifice, is a culture of sublimated predation.
Mark O'Connell
Example is the school of mankind and they will learn at no other.
Edmund Burke
Bí ann nó astáimse ag triall Ortagus má tácuirim geasa Ortmé a shábháilón dreama deirgur fear fuarsa spéir Thú.
Caitlín Maude
Ready?" Jaime echoed. "Yes, yes, I am ready. I am ready to drink a lot of liquids and lie on the sofa moaning faintly all day long. That is what I am ready for. I cannot engage in physical activity of any sort or my head will fall right off. Is that what you want Nick? Because if so, I find that hurtful.
Sarah Rees Brennan
Alan: Conning people out of their savings. Forgery. Blackmail. Selling real estate on Mars. We could have it all. You with me, Bambi?"Sin: "Clive, I was with you from 'I'm a social worker.
Sarah Rees Brennan
An Irish queer: a fellow who prefers women to drink.
Sean O'Faolain
You mean that because I have no name I cannot die and that you cannot be held answerable for death even if you kill me?""That is about the size of it," said the Sergeant.I felt so sad and so entirely disappointed that tears came into my eyes and a lump of incommunicable poignancy swelled tragically in my throat. I began to feel intensely every fragment of my equal humanity. The life that was bubbling at the end of my fingers was real and nearly painful in intensity and so was the beauty of my warm face and the loose humanity of my limbs and the racy health of my red rich blood. To leave it all without good reason and to smash the little empire into small fragments was a thing too pitiful even to refuse to think about.
Flann O'Brien
Oscar’s hobby was saving people. He used to save people all the time, and fix things that were broken and catch people when they were falling. It wasn’t a skill you’d immediately know about or notice. Stevie said that Oscar had a gift and the gift was that he could smell things you wouldn’t imagine would smell of anything- things like sadness and desperation. Things like far and hopelessness.He never made a big deal about it, but he was quiet and confident – and when you believe in own abilities, you are much more likely to be always ready to act on them, which Oscar always was. Whenever I asked him about it, he claimed that his were not exceptional or extraordinary abilities in the slightest. Everyone, he said, is able to tell when someone is in need of help, but few people really take the time to listen to their instincts, and that, he said, was the only difference between him and a lot of other of people.
Sarah Moore Fitzgerald
We want a few mad people now. See where the sane ones have landed us!
George Bernard Shaw
It is the duty of every father... to write fairy tales for his children.
Oscar Wilde
Don't do it! Stay away from your potential. You'll mess it up, it's potential, leave it. Anyway, it's like your bank balance - you always have a lot less than you think.
Dylan Moran
Lucky people should hide. Pray the days of wrath do not visit their home.
Josephine Hart
... ongoing care for the soul rather than seek for a cure appreciates the mystery of human suffering and does not offer the illusion of a problem-free life.I sees every fall into ignorance and confusion as an opportunity to discover that the beast residing at the center of the labyrinth is also an angel.To approach this paradoxial point of tension where adjustment and abnormality meet is to move closer to the realization of our mystery-filled, star-born nature.It is a beast this thing that stirs in the core of our being, but it is also the star of our innermost nature.We have to care for this suffering with extreme reverence so that in our fear and anger at the beast, we do not overlock the star.~Thomas Moore *Care of the Soul*
Thomas Moore
The true nature of a democracy is its ability to say yes when even the powerful say no
Colum McCann
But he also knew that, as much as he wanted to aid and console the soldier, he wanted to be alone in his room with the night coming down and a book close by and pen and paper and the knowledge that the door would remain shut until the morning came and he would ne be disturbed. The gap between these two desires filled him with sadness and awe at the mystery of the self, the mystery of having a single consciousness, knowing merely its own bare feelings and experiencing singly and alone it own pain or fear or pleasure or complacency.
Colm Tóibín
fights you on patriotic principles he robs you on business principles he enslaves you on imperial principles.
George Bernard Shaw
Ah, yeah. Yeah, tis awful all right. Well, your Mam wanted me to talk to you about it, but…’He stopped; he didn’t know what else to say.‘Yeah? Ah, I know the score, Dad. She wants me to be careful, is it?’‘Ah, no. Well, yeah; there’s that, of course. No, she wanted… well, if you’d any questions, youknow?’ I wasn’t sure if he wanted me to say yes, or if he just wanted me to say no, and save himhaving to be awkward. He looked lost. I felt like I wanted to save him‘No, I’ve no questions, Dad. It’s all right, shur.’ He looked at me then. His eyes went wet, likehe was going to start bawling. If we were in a film, he might have hugged me. But we were inLimerick, so he just said:‘Well, so,’ and put his one glove back on.From The Boys of Summer
Ciarán West
Remember my friend, that knowledge is stronger than memory, and we should not trust the weaker
Bram Stoker
About this time, whether he felt there wasn't sufficient drama in his life or that he was determined not to be outdone by Miss McCabe, he decided that he was dying.
John McGahern
No one's ever really ready for a troll.
Eoin Colfer
What people call insincerity is simply a method by which we can multiply our personalities.
Oscar Wilde
It came to Mary now that her mother had been right, after all; Mary had been born for this. In sixteen years she'd shot along the shortest route she could find between life and death, as the crow flew.
Emma Donoghue
Nevertheless, life and death are mysterious states, and we know little of the resources of either.
J. Sheridan Le Fanu
Most of all she loved that when she hugged him her head would rest neatly just below his chin, where she could feel his breath lightly blowing her hair and tickling her head.
Cecelia Ahern
If a man whistles at you, don't turn around. You are a lady not a dog.
Niall Horan
That’s what it takes to be a hero, a little gem of innocence inside you that makes you want to believe that there still exists a right and wrong, that decency will somehow triumph in the end.
Lise Hand
I hope we meet again," said Ramman."I do too," Tel Hesani said, then added underneath his breath, "Although I fear it won't be in this world.
Darren Shan
What's a Dullahan?''He's a headless horseman, in the service of the banshee.''Headless?''Yes.''Seriously?''Yes.''So he has no head?''That's usually what headless means.''No head at all?''You're really getting hung up on this headless thing, aren't you?''It's just kind of silly, even for us.''Yet you spend your days with a living skeleton.''But at least he has a head.''True.''He even has a spare.
Derek Landy
Plato claimed that we were all joined to someone else once, we were humans with four arms and four legs, and a head of two faces, but we were so powerful we threatened to topple the Gods. So they split us from our sole mates down the middle, and doomed us to live forever without our counterparts
Sarah Crossan
For the only way one can speak of nothing is to speak of it as though it were something, just as the only way one can speak of God is to speak of him as though he were a man, which to be sure he was, in a sense, for a time, and as the only way one can speak of a man, even our anthropologists have realised that, is to speak of him as though he were a termite.
Samuel Beckett
They're only trees. Only trees. Whose afraid of lonely trees?
Ruth Frances Long
Women are attracted to bad boys not because they want to fall in love… we just want to ride on the backs of their motor bikes.
Dermot Davis
Tonight, history was going to be made. And it wasn't the discovery-of-radium, first-man-on-the-moon happy kind of history. It was the Spanish-Inquisition, here-comes-the-Hindenburg bad kind of history.
Eoin Colfer
And the bell jangled, the driver started. The bus whirled off, to the last stop, the lonely room, the lonely night.
Brian Moore
Since when," he asked,"Are the first line and last line of any poemWhere the poem begins and ends?
Seamus Heaney
with ringworm, lice bites, and a million bugs. Men so sick they are dying
Sebastian Barry
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
Oscar Wilde
To Nature nothing can be added; from Nature nothing can be taken away; the sum of her energies is constant, and the utmost man can do in the pursuit of physical truth, or in the applications of physical knowledge, is to shift the constituents of the never-varying total. The law of conservation rigidly excludes both creation and annihilation. Waves may change to ripples, and ripples to waves; magnitude may be substituted for number, and number for magnitude; asteroids may aggregate to suns, suns may resolve themselves into florae and faunae, and floras and faunas melt in air: the flux of power is eternally the same. It rolls in music through the ages, and all terrestrial energy—the manifestations of life as well as the display of phenomena—are but the modulations of its rhythm.
John Tyndall
What I was caught up in, I dimly understood, was the embodiment of history
Peter Cunningham
The secret of survival is a defective imagination.
John Banville
You know I'll be Your Life Your VoiceYour Reason To BeMy Love My Heart Is Breathing For this Moment in TimeI'll Find the words to sayBefore You leave me Today
One Direction
In the great cities we see so little of the world, we drift into our minority. In the little towns and villages there are no minorities; people are not numerous enough. You must see the world there, perforce. Every man is himself a class; every hour carries its new challenge. When you pass the inn at the end of the village you leave your favourite whimsy behind you; for you will meet no one who can share it. We listen to eloquent speaking, read books and write them, settle all the affairs of the universe. The dumb village multitudes pass on unchanging; the feel of the spade in the hand is no different for all our talk: good seasons and bad follow each other as of old. The dumb multitudes are no more concerned with us than is the old horse peering through the rusty gate of the village pound. The ancient map-makers wrote across unexplored regions, 'Here are lions.' Across the villages of fishermen and turners of the earth, so different are these from us, we can write but one line that is certain, 'Here are ghosts.' ("Village Ghosts")
W.B. Yeats
Don’t have the veins bulging in your biro.
Seamus Heaney
No one remembers how you got a chance, they only remember what you did with it.
Stewart Stafford