Quotes by Irish Authors - Page 33

Also," Nick added curtly, "I'm sorry about your face."Jamie looked over his shoulder, and touched the demon's mark crawling along his jaw with the back of his hand. "Sorry about saving all our lives by doing something you had to do?""Oh no," Nick said blandly, "I just meant, you know. Generally."Jamie stared at him, shocked, and laughed. It was a real laugh, helpless and sweet, and Mae memorized it in case he died. Jamie by the river at dawn, laughing.
Sarah Rees Brennan
It is a dangerous thing to reform anyone.
Oscar Wilde
About Hollywood.I feel like it’s a big ocean, full of bottom feeders, midlevel fish, the occasional shark, and some wonderful savvy whales, the elders, and the ones who guide you on your way. If you’re lucky enough, you get to be a dolphin and have your waves broken by the passage of these elders before you, but at the same time, you get an occasional shark bite in the tail and maybe one of the bottom feeders comes up and takes a little nibble. But I see myself as cresting a series of waves, dipping down, sometimes, lower than I’d like, but mainly kind of happily staying above. (smiles and takes a long drag of her cigarette) And, of course, I try to avoid the fishnets.
Anjelica Huston
O cowardly amd tyrannous race of monks, persecutors of the bard, and the gleemen, haters of life and joy! O race that does not draw the sword and tell the truth! O race that melts the bones of the people with cowardice and with deceit! ("The Crucifixion Of The Outcast")
W.B. Yeats
Any subject we exclude from fiction will drop from our culture's memory.
Emma Donoghue
She has gone back to Brooklyn,' her mother would say. And, as the train rolled past Macmire Bridge on its way towards Wexford, Eilis imagined the years already when these words would come to mean less and less to the man who heard them and would come to mean more and more to herself. She almost smiled at the thought of it, then closed her eyes and tried to imagine nothing more.
Colm Tóibín
Ah! that is the great thing in life, to live the truth.
Oscar Wilde
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
I'll fares the land to hastening ills a prey Where wealth accumulates and men decay Princes and Lords may flourish or may fade - A breath can make them as a breath has made - But a bold peasantry their country's pride When once destroy'd can never be supplied.
Oliver Goldsmith
For what is truth? In matters of religion, it is simply the opinion that has survived. In matters of science, it is the ultimate sensation. In matters of art, it is one's last mood.
Oscar Wilde
I respect kindness in human beings first of all and kindness to animals. I don't respect the law I have a total irreverance for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer the beer stronger the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.
Brendan Behan
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. The people who get on in this world are they who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they can't find them make them.
George Bernard Shaw
To be certain you're consuming the real deal, look carefully at the label. W-h-i-s-k-e-y indicates the heavenly liquid from the Emerald Isle. Without the "e," it's from Scotland or some other godforsaken place.
Rashers Tierney
I think I only appear smart by staying quiet as often as possible.
Sally Rooney
Gulliver describes a royal personage inspiring awe among the tiny Lilliputians because he was taller than his brethren by the breadth of a human fingernail.
Jonathan Swift
The worn soles of Daffy's boots skidded on the icy stones. He'd been saving up for a new pair for Christmas, but then he'd come across an encyclopaedia in ten volumes, going cheap. Boots might last ten years, at best, but knowledge was eternal.
Emma Donoghue
I had a strange feeling that Fate had in store for me exquisite joys and exquisite sorrows.
Oscar Wilde
In order to be company he must display a certain mental activity. But it need not be of a high order. Indeed it might be argued the lower the better. Up to a point. The lower the order of mental activity the better the company. Up to a point.
Samuel Beckett
Were I a philosopher, I should write a philosophy of toys, showing that nothing else in life need to be taken seriously, and that Christmas Day in the company of children is one of the few occasions on which men become entirely alive.
Robert Lynd
Because you promised? But you've promised me load of things. Like to cherish me and to love till death do us part.
Marian Keyes
Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval.
Oscar Wilde
BELOVED, gaze in thine own heart, The holy tree is growing there; From joy the holy branches start, And all the trembling flowers they bear. The changing colours of its fruit Have dowered the stars with merry light; The surety of its hidden root Has planted quiet in the night; The shaking of its leafy head Has given the waves their melody, And made my lips and music wed, Murmuring a wizard song for thee. There the Loves a circle go, The flaming circle of our days, Gyring, spiring to and fro In those great ignorant leafy ways; Remembering all that shaken hair And how the wingèd sandals dart, Thine eyes grow full of tender care: Beloved, gaze in thine own heart. Gaze no more in the bitter glass The demons, with their subtle guile, Lift up before us when they pass, Or only gaze a little while; For there a fatal image grows That the stormy night receives, Roots half hidden under snows, Broken boughs and blackened leaves. For all things turn to barrenness In the dim glass the demons hold, The glass of outer weariness, Made when God slept in times of old. There, through the broken branches, go The ravens of unresting thought; Flying, crying, to and fro, Cruel claw and hungry throat, Or else they stand and sniff the wind, And shake their ragged wings; alas! Thy tender eyes grow all unkind: Gaze no more in the bitter glass.- The Two Trees
W.B. Yeats
What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise
Oscar Wilde
Fairy tales are such evil stories for young children. Every time I'm in a mess I expect a long-haired posh-speaking man to come trotting into my life (on a horse of course, literally trotting himself...) Then you realize you don't want a long-haired posh-speaking man trotting into your life because he's the one who put you in the bloody mess in the first place.
Cecelia Ahern
But we know that we are no longer the same, and not only know that we are no longer the same, but know in what we are no longer the same, you wiser but not sadder, and I sadder but not wiser, for wiser I could hardly become without grave personal inconvenience, whereas sorrow is a thing you can keep on adding to all your life long, is it not, like a stamp or egg collection
Samuel Beckett
It would be well to realize that the talk of ‘humane methods of warfare’, of the ‘rules of civilized warfare’, and all such homage to the finer sentiments of the race are hypocritical and unreal, and only intended for the consumption of stay-at-homes. There are no humane methods of warfare, there is no such thing as civilized warfare; all warfare is inhuman, all warfare is barbaric; the first blast of the bugles of war ever sounds for the time being the funeral knell of human progress… What lover of humanity can view with anything but horror the prospect of this ruthless destruction of human life. Yet this is war: war for which all the jingoes are howling, war to which all the hopes of the world are being sacrificed, war to which a mad ruling class would plunge a mad world.
James Connolly
Knowledge is a matter of knowing facts. Wisdom is a matter of understanding and applying principles. A certain amount of knowledge is necessary for wisdom, and without wisdom, knowledge is not only useless, it's dangerous.
Hilda van Stockum
Maybe I’m a human, but I’m a me-and-Ma as well.
Emma Donoghue
These infinitesimal distinctions between man and man are too paltry for an Omnipotent Being. How these madmengive themselves away! The real God taketh heed lest a sparrow fall. But the God created from human vanity seesno difference between an eagle and a sparrow.
Bram Stoker
The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming.
Oscar Wilde
Ever Tried. Ever Failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
Samuel Beckett
Every time he touched her, the touch felt new, like something they had just invented together.
Sarah Rees Brennan
Tale-bearers are as bad as the tale-makers.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
The lies we tell other people are nothing to the lies we tell ourselves.
Derek Landy
They say sarcasm is the lowest form of wit," Valkyrie said. China glanced at her. "They've obviously never met me.
Derek Landy
Interesting fact from the front lines: raw grief smells like ripped leaves and splintered branches, a jagged green shriek.
Tana French
He was one of those characters who felt that a weak handshake could somehow damage his authority, which meant that every handshake had to bloody hurt.
Adrian McKinty
After all, in this world of humans, he was little better than a monster, and what did a monster have to be afraid of in the dark?
Darren Shan
Above us, outlined against the brilliant sky, dragons crowded every available perching space on the Rim. And the sun made a gold of every one of them.
Anne McCaffrey
I jumped on Sinbad's bottle. Nothing happened. I didn't do it again. Sometimes when nothing happened it was really getting ready to happen
Roddy Doyle
To learn one must be humble. But life is the great teacher.
James Joyce
Don't make the mistake of letting pride get in the way of forgiveness. You still love him. He still loves you. Don't throw it all away just because your feelings are hurt.
Marian Keyes
One day when I was praying, it suddenly occurred to me thatI was talking to myself.
Peter O'Toole
Clinton and his cigar was so much greater a man than Bush and his rifle.
Sebastian Barry
The world was my oyster but I used the wrong fork.
Oscar Wilde
And you, their best beloved one, are now to me, flesh of my flesh; blood of my blood; kin of my kin; my bountiful wine-press for awhile; and shall later on be my companion and my helper.
Bram Stoker
No power so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
Edmund Burke
Your desire is your prayer. Picture the fulfillment of your desire now and feel its reality and you will experience the joy of the answered.Dr. Joseph Murphy
Joseph Murphy
When I came to again—parched, pain rampaging through my intestines—I was in my bed. The little bedside lamp illuminated two anxious faces, my sister’s and Mrs. P.’s (the latter looking a shade guilty, I noted, no doubt realizing that it was effectively through her negligence that I had been forced to poison myself) [. . .] “I think he has eaten many kidney beans.” Mrs. P. shuddered. “Many kidney beans not cooked.” “Beans!” I cried again deliriously. “Oh for heaven’s sake,” Bel said. “Charles, listen carefully, did you soak the beans before you cooked them?” “Of course I didn’t soak them,” I said. “What are you talking about?
Paul Murray
O bid me mount and sail up thereAmid the cloudy wrack,For Peg and Meg and Paris' loveThat had so straight a back,Are gone away, and some that stayHave changed their silk for sack.
W.B. Yeats
I tried to groan, Help! Help! But the tone that came out was that of polite conversation.
Samuel Beckett
So that was where we were in our relationship.Derwent’s scale ran all the way from wouldn’t piss-on-you-if-you-were-on-fire to would-kill-for-you-no-need-to-ask-twice. I was quite glad to be somewhere near the middle.
Jane Casey
My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say and then to say it with the utmost levity.
George Bernard Shaw
Oh, I hate the cheap severity of abstract ethics!
Oscar Wilde
I love you all, even those I don’t particularly like. That’s you, Beryl.
Derek Landy
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
Edmund Burke
You pay by the hour, even if the job only takes five minutes. I don’t do fractions.
John Connolly
He sits, strong and blunt as a Celtic cross, Clearly used to silence and an armchair: Tonight the wife and children will be quiet At slammed door and smoker's cough in the hall.
Seamus Heaney
Can't bring back time. Like holding water in your hand.
James Joyce
Never despair but if you do work on in despair.
Edmund Burke