Quotes by Irish Authors - Page 36

Jealousy, that diseased crow pecking at your heart.
Stewart Stafford
If we need the protection of men, let us first ask it from God. If we prevail with Him, the power of the most mighty and of the most wicked must minister to our relief.
Alexander Carson
The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable.
Oscar Wilde
Hope like that, as I thought before, doesn’t make you a weak person. It’s hopelessness that makes you weak. Hope makes you stronger, because it brings with it a sense of reason. Not a reason for how or why they were taken from you, but a reason for you to live. Because it’s a maybe. A ‘maybe someday things won’t always be this shit.’ And that ‘maybe’ immediately makes the shittiness better.
Cecelia Ahern
He put on his hat and wrapped his scarf around his jaw, but did without the wig and the sunglasses. He clicked his key chain and the car beeped and the doors locked."That's it?"He looked up. "Sorry?""Aren't you afraid it might get stolen? We're not exactly in a good part of town.""It's got a car alarm.""Don't you, like, cast a spell or something? To keep it safe?""No. It's a pretty good car alarm.
Derek Landy
Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.
Oscar Wilde
Have you killed anyone?” she asked quickly.“What? Did you miss what I said, about turning murder intoan art form?”“But you haven’t actually killed anyone yet, have you? I readyour file.”He glowered. “Technically, yeah, all right, maybe I haven’t
Derek Landy
The traffic warden looked up. "This your car?" "It is," said Skulduggery. The traffic warden nodded. "Very nice, very nice. But you can't park here, day or night." "I wasn't aware of that." "There's a sign right over there." "I didn't think it applied to me." "Why wouldn't it have applied to you?" Skulduggery tilted his head. "Because I'm special." "Don't care how special you think you are, you're parked in a no parking area and as such you're---" "We're here on official police business." The traffic warden narrowed his eyes. "You're Garda? I'm going to need to see some identification." "We're undercover," said Skulduggery. "This is a very important undercover operation which you are endangering just by talking to us." He opened his jacket. "Look, I have a gun. I am Detective Inspector Me. This is my partner, Detective Her." The traffic warden frowned. "Her?" "Me," said Stephanie. "Him?" "Not me," said Skulduggery. "Her." "Me," said Stephanie. "You?" said the traffic warden. "Yes," said Stephanie. "I"m sorry, who are you?" Stephanie looked at him. "I'm Her, he's Me. Got it? Good. You better get out of here before you blow our cover. They've got snipers.
Derek Landy
Pleasure is the only thing to live for. Nothing ages like happiness.
Oscar Wilde
The number one joy indicator, the one thing that will predict whether someone feels joy in their life or not, is the practice of gratitude.
John O'Leary
Nowadays 'invisibility' was supposed to be the big problem, but the way I saw it was, all that mattered was to be visible to yourself.
Emma Donoghue
Damn it all, MacMurrough, are you telling me you are an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort?’‘If you mean am I Irish, the answer is yes.
Jamie O'Neill
Man is many things, but he is not rational.
Oscar Wilde
The world might be going up in flames, but we have to carry on as normal
Darren Shan
Sometimes to walk in shaded parts of Manhattan is to be inserted into a Magritte: the street is night while the sky is day.
Joseph O'Neill
People run away to be alone,' he said. Some people had to be alone.
William Trevor
Why can't these American women stay in their own country? They are always telling us that it is the paradise for women.It is. That is the reason why, like Eve, they are so excessively anxious to get out of it.
Oscar Wilde
If her mind had held even the smallest chance of a future, she would have had no reason to tell me anything at all, whether or not it could send her to prison. But this is what I know about people getting ready to walk off the edges of their own lives: they want someone to know how they got there. Maybe they want to know that when they dissolve into earth and water, that last fragment will be saved, held in some corner of someone's mind; or maybe all they want is is a chance to dump it pulsing and bloody into someone else's hands, so it won't weigh them down on the journey. They want to leave their stories behind. No one in all the world knows that better than I do.
Tana French
Gin and whisky cost so much more. Oblivion and courage could no longer be purchased for the price of an old song.
Norah Hoult
The optimist sees the donut, the pessimist sees the hole.
Oscar Wilde
Real life was curious enough without the embellishments of fiction.
John Connolly
When you see something, it can’t be unseen. When you hear a sound, it can never be unheard. I know, deep down, that this evening I have learned something that can never be unlearned. And the part of my world that is altered will never be the same.
Cecelia Ahern
After Puckoon I swore I'd never write another book. This is it
Spike Milligan
God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.
Laurence Sterne
When I meet people, I no longer say "Hi, I'm Derek Landy, pleased to meet you." Now I say "Hi, I'm number one bestselling author Derek Landy. Worship me.
Derek Landy
I'll understand if you don't want me. But I will be heartbroken. You are all I ever dreamed of and hoped for. You are much, much more. Please know that I didn't think I was mean-minded. But I realize I am. I don't want you to put your arms around me and say it's all right, that you forgive me. I want you to be sure that you do, and my love for you will last as long as I live. I can see no lightness, no humour, no joke to make. I just hope that we will be able to go back to when we had laughter, and the world was coloured, not black and white and grey. I am so sorry for hurting you. I could inflict all kinds of pain on myself, but it would not take back any I gave to you. - David Power
Maeve Binchy
I have found that there are two ways of dealing with men. Either you treat them with respect, or you kill them. Anything in between merely breeds resentment and the desire for revenge.
Paul Kearney
I suppose we all have our little hiding-hole if the truth was known, but as small as it is, the whole world is in it, and bit by bit grows on us again till the day You find us out.
Frank O'Connor
There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch of the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not.
Oscar Wilde
Weak? Oh, I am sick of hearing that phrase. Sick of using it about others. Weak? Do you really think, that it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations that it requires strength, strength and courage, to yield to. To stake all one's life on a single moment, to risk everything on one throw, whether the stake be power or pleasure, I care not-there is no weakness in that. There is a horrible, terrible courage. I had that courage.
Oscar Wilde
I don’t remember now who took the photo of us, but I’ve had it in my room for years. We’re leaning out of our windows and we’re laughing at each other with joyfulness purer than anything to do with the polite smiling you get used to doing when you get older. The photo has the kind of proper smiles that happen when you’re looking straight into the face of someone who’s been your best friend for a long time.
Sarah Moore Fitzgerald
Beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins
Oscar Wilde
Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
Glenn Meade
Imagine you had a friend who was there for you all the time and you were there for them, but they stopped being there for you as much as they used to which you can understand a little because people have things to do, but then they’re around less and less no matter how much you try to reach out to them. Then suddenly one day - nothing - they’re gone. Just like that. Then you write to them, and you’re ignored, and then you write to them again and you’re ignored and finally you write to them for a third time and they barely even want to make the appointment, they’re so busy with their job, their friends and their car. How would you feel?
Cecelia Ahern
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.
Jonathan Swift
What a silly thing love is!' said the student as he walked away. 'It is not half as useful as logic, for it does not prove anything, and it is always telling one of things that are not going to happen, and making one believe things that are not true. In fact, it is quite unpractical, and, as in this age to be practical is everything, I shall go back to philosophy and study metaphysics.' So he returned to his room and pulled out a great dusty book, and began to read.
Oscar Wilde
Maybe he likes the look of Mae," Nick drawled."Don't be ridiculous."Nick raised his eyebrows. "Does he like the look of Jamie?
Sarah Rees Brennan
The clock in the church tower said 4.32, as it had done for three hundred years. It was right once a day and that was better than no clock at all.
Spike Milligan
I have no objection to anyone’s sex life as long as they don’t practice it in the street and frighten the horses.
Oscar Wilde
You have no idea about presents or what they mean. The lastpresent you gave me was a stick.”“You wanted a weapon.”“It was a stick.”“It had a bow on it.”“It was a stick.”“I thought you liked the stick. You laughed.
Derek Landy
Good. Illegal is always faster.
Eoin Colfer
Only a determined and resourceful scholar could establish manuscript precedence - but in the race to masturbate on a printed page Proust definitely came first.
Michael Foley
The things people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public opinion is of no value whatsoever. Even if people employ actual violence, they are not to be violent in turn. That would be to fall to the same low level. After all, even in prison, a man can be quite free. His soul can be free. His personality can be untroubled. He can be at peace. And, above all things, they are not to interfere with other people or judge them in any way. Personality is a very mysterious thing. A man cannot always be estimated by what he does. He may keep the law, and yet be worthless. He may break the law, and yet be fine. He may be bad, without ever doing anything bad. He may commit a sin against society, and yet realize through that sin his true perfection.
Oscar Wilde
Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.
George Bernard Shaw
Excuse me, Captain. Are you two going to weep salty tears of admiration over a helmet all night, or do we have matters to discuss?
Eoin Colfer
I’m just saying that once that have an excuse, people will do anything. They do what they are told, and they take their money and they think it’s all okay because it’s just their job, while their real self is what happens after work, when they’re bouncing a baby on the knee, or writing poems about snowflakes or whatever.
Paul Murray
Mademoiselle De Lafontaine – in right of her father, who was a German, assumed to be psychological, metaphysical and something of a mystic – now declared that when the moon shone with a light so intense it was well known that it indicated a special spiritual activity. The effect of the full moon in such a state of brilliancy was manifold. It acted on dreams, it acted on lunacy, it acted on nervous people; it had marvelous physical influences connected with life. Mademoiselle related that here cousin, who was mate of a merchant ship, having taken a nap on deck on such a night, lying on his back, with his face full in the light of the moon, had wakened, after a dream of an old woman clawing him by the cheek, with his features horribly drawn to one side; and his countenance had never quite recovered its equilibrium.
J. Sheridan Le Fanu
Ordinary women never appeal to one's imagination.They are limited to their century. No glamour every transfigures them. One knows their minds as easily as one knows their bonnets. One can always find them. There is no mystery in any of them.
Oscar Wilde
If there is anything more annoying in the world than having people talk about you, it is certainly having no one talk about you.
Oscar Wilde
He means to succeed, and a man who has centuries before him can afford to wait and to go slow.
Bram Stoker
The world begins anew with every birth, my father used to say. He forgot to say, with every death it ends. Or did not think he needed to. Because for a goodly part of his life he worked in a graveyard.
Sebastian Barry
Okay, can you pass yourself off as a magician and gain Gerald's trust and pass us information about Celeste's plans and save all the magicians who want to be saved? Jaime asked. "Because if so awesome. I shall stay here and eat pie.
Sarah Rees Brennan
You find my words dark. Darkness is in our souls, do you not think?
James Joyce
With a tremendous effort, Areop-Enap opened all its eyes. " I am sorry to leave you alone and defenseless."Perenelle sealed the spider Elder into the huge cocoon of web, then turned and strode across the room. The tiniest breeze swept the floor clean before her. " I am Perenelle Flamel, the Sorceress,"she said aloud, unsure whether Aerop-Enap could hear her. "And I am never defenseless.
Michael Scott
By the craggy hill-side,Through the mosses bare,They have planted thorn-treesFor pleasure here and there.If any man so daringAs dig them up in spite,He shall find their sharpest thornsIn his bed at night.
William Allingham
Shut up, Julius! I mean, quiet a moment, Commander.
Eoin Colfer
Self-denial is not a virtue it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.
George Bernard Shaw
Mistakes are the portals of discovery.
James Joyce
I am old enough to know that time passing is just a trick, a convenience. Everything is always there, still unfolding, still happening. The past, the present, and the future, in the noggin eternally, like brushes, combs and ribbons in a handbag.
Sebastian Barry
SpringThe season between winter and summer, comprising in the Northern Hemispherethe months March, April and May.The ability of something to return to its original shape when it is pressed down, stretched or twisted.
Cecelia Ahern