Quotes by Irish Authors - Page 41

Kindness suits you.""Really? I think I'm quite allergic to it.
Derek Landy
There was something factitious and brittle and thereby utterly feminine about her charm which made me want to crush her, even to crunch her. She had a slight cast in one eye which gives her gaze a strange concentrated intensity. Her eyes sparkle, almost as if they were actually emitting sparks. She is electric. And she could run faster in very high-heeled shoes than any girl I ever met.
Iris Murdoch
I want a new liver to replace my heart.""Um, why?""Because then I could drink more and care less.
L.A. Casey
Never back a woman you defend, never get quit of a friend on whom you depend, never make face to a foe till he’s rife and never get stuck to another man’s pfife.
James Joyce
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas - too sad story. This book is very good and sad
John Boyne
Its not easy being a man you know. I had to get dressed today… and there are other pressures.
Dylan Moran
Every time a man smiles and much more when he laughs it adds something to his fragment of life.
Laurence Sterne
He crouched at the car window and looked in. 'What a lovely family you have. What a charming family. They're all lovely. Except for that one.' His finger jabbed the glass. 'That one's a bit ugly.
Derek Landy
Who can say for certain that he is sincere, who can say for certain that he believes? In the midst of of our deepest emotions we are acting a comedy with ourselves; within us one self is always mocking another self. - priscilla and emily lofte
George Moore
The cabin in the woods is to the American Gothic what the haunted castle is to the European - the seed from which everything else ultimately grows.
Bernice M Murphy Dr
I could tell from Anna's face that she had already told him about dancing in Saint Petersburg and that the memory weighed on her heavily. What monstrous things, our pasts, especially when they have been lovely. She had told a secret and now had the sadness of wondering how much deeper she might dig in order to keep the first secret fed.
Colum McCann
Each imagining himself to be the first last and only alone, whereas he is neither first last nor last nor only not alone in a series originating in and repeated to infinity.
James Joyce
And then you’ll catch yourself thinking about something or someone who has no connection with the past. Someone who’s only yours. And you’ll realize… that this is where your life is.
Colm Tóibín
I pray to God to give me perseverance and to deign that I be a faithful witness to Him to the end of my life for my God.
St. Patrick
Look at the woebegone walk of him. Eaten a bad egg. Poached eyes on ghost.
James Joyce
Friends don't menace friends with giant terrifying swords, okay?
Sarah Rees Brennan
Places are supposed to look smaller when you go back to them, but my road just looked schizoid. A couple of the houses had had nifty little makeovers involving double glazing and amusing faux-antique pastel paint; most of them hadn't. Number 16 looked like it was on its last legs: the roof was in tatters, there was a pile of bricks and a dead wheelbarrow by the front steps, and at some point in the last twenty years someone had set the door on fire. In Number 8, a window on the first floor was lit up, gold and cozy and dangerous as hell.
Tana French
Nothing is politically right which is morally wrong.
Daniel O'Connell
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
John Philpot Curran
Silently we went round and round,And through each hollow mindThe memory of dreadful thingsRushed like a dreadful wind,And horror stalked before each man,And terror crept behind.
Oscar Wilde
To be really mediæval one should have no body. To be really modern one should have no soul. To be really Greek one should have no clothes.
Oscar Wilde
Crack, crack—crack, crack—crack, crack—so this is Paris! quoth I (continuing in the same mood)—and this is Paris!—humph!—Paris! cried I, repeating the name the third time— The first, the finest, the most brilliant— —The streets however are nasty; But it looks, I suppose, better than it smells—crack, crack—crack, crack—
Laurence Sterne
Honestly, if you're looking for love and you're not too choosy, hang around a hardware store fingering screws.
Marian Keyes
Reasons aren't really things that make you do other things. Reasons are things that you make up, much later, to reassure everyone that we are all logical and that the world makes sense. We do unreasonable things, because we want to, at the time. No reason. Much later we sit in the wreckage, building reasons out of little bits of wreckage, so we'll have something to show the crash investigators. Look, this is what caused it. So the whole mess at least appears reasonable. So we can convince ourselves that at least there was a reason for the disaster, something we can prevent or avoid, so it'll never happen again. But a lot of the time there's no reason. We just flew it to the ground. Because we felt like it. And we're still dangerous. And it could happen again anytime. Its easier to live with each other afterwards if we give each other reasons.
Julian Gough
Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test reality we must see it on the tight rope. When the verities become acrobats, we can judge them.
Oscar Wilde
Never waste jealousy on a real man: it is the imaginary man that supplants us all in the long run.
George Bernard Shaw
I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream - I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of medievalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal - to something finer, richer, than the Hellenic ideal, it may be. But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals.
Oscar Wilde
If you look at life one way there is always cause for alarm.
Elizabeth Bowen
I looked to the sitting room then and gaped at Alec's body lying across my sofa making it look smaller than it was. He was reading something.A book."What are you readin'?" I curiously asked."That porn book we were talking about earlier at my house. This dude is my God! He just fucked this Ana chick while she was on her period.""Stop it!" I screeched. "Stop readin' and put the bloody book down!"He was reading Fifty Shades of Grey.I was both horrified and mortified.Alec got up from the sofa, placed the book on the coffee table and turned in my direction."Why are you blushing?"Him noticing my embarrassment only caused my already red cheeks to heat up even more."Oh damn, your cheeks are so flushed," Alec said and took a step towards me.
L.A. Casey
What a fine fellow is Quincey! I believe in my heart of hearts that he suffered as much about Lucy’s death as any of us, but he bore himself through it like a moral Viking. If America can go on breeding men like that, she will be a power in the world indeed.
Bram Stoker
Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.
Oscar Wilde
To gain that which is worth having,it may be necessary to lose everything else.
Bernadette Devlin McAliskey
Let those who smile at me, ask themselves whether they have been indebted most to imagination or reality for all they have enjoyed in life, if indeed they have ever enjoyed any thing.
Charles Robert Maturin
If it was that beautiful, why did I leave you
Marian Keyes
If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.
George Bernard Shaw
History is the preceptor of prudence, not principles.
Edmund Burke
Devic MagicWoodland sprites, elves and nymphsWaltz in time take a glimpseFairies hide the forest witMushrooms fly, agarics hit
William O'Brien
Now there was great rejoicing at the rumor of Alderic's quest, for all folk knew that he was a cautious man, and they deemed that he would succeed and enrich the world, and they rubbed their hands in the cities at the thought of largesse; and there was joy among all men in Alderic's country, except perchance among the lenders of money, who feared they would soon be paid. And there was rejoicing also because men hoped that when the Gibbelins were robbed of their hoard, they would shatter their high-built bridge and break the golden chains that bound them to the world, and drift back, they and their tower, to the moon, from which they had come and to which they rightly belonged. There was little love for the Gibbelins, though all men envied their hoard.("The Hoard Of The Gibbelins")
Lord Dunsany
The only ironic thing about that song is that it's called 'Ironic' and it is written by a woman who doesn't know what irony is. That's quite ironic when you think about it. (on Alanis Morissette's 'Ironic')
Ed Byrne
In fact, now you mention the subject, I have been very bad in my own small way.I don't think you should be so proud of that, though I am sure it must have been very pleasant.
Oscar Wilde
The pure and simple truth is, the truth is never pure and simple.
Oscar Wilde
The only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.
Oscar Wilde
That each man is the sum of his choices is nothing less than the truth. And each, perhaps, is also something else.
Joseph O'Connor
And Beauty is a form of Genius - is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation.
Oscar Wilde
Ginny Cupper took me in her car out to the spread fields of Indiana. Parking near the edge of woods and walking out into the sunny rows of corn, waving seeds to a yellow horizon. She wore a white blouse and a gray patch of sweat under her arms and the shadow of her nipples was gray. We were rich. So rich we could never die. Ginny laughed and laughed, white saliva on her teeth lighting up the deep red of her mouth, fed the finest food in the world. Ginny was afraid of nothing. She was young and old. Her brown arms and legs swinging in wild optimism, beautiful in all their parts. She danced on the long hood of her crimson Cadillac, and watching her, I thought that God must be female. She leaped into my arms and knocked me to the ground and screamed into my mouth.
J.P. Donleavy
Have to be honest with you Darquesse, I cannot feel that. That must be one of your special abilities, because to me, it looks like you just killed a whole bunch of people for no reason.""Oh," said Darquesse. "That's so sad
Derek Landy
Two lost things that had survived the seas and arrived on a coastline. What did they do? They implanted themselves in the sand and grew into trees and lined the beaches. Sometimes a lot can come of being all washed up. You can really grow.
Cecelia Ahern
Reluctant to return to the empty rooms of Bluebell Cottage, Olivia ate fish and chips on the harbor wall, dangling her legs over the side just like she used to as a little girl, even though it made her mam anxious.The breeze nipped at the back of her neck and whipped up a fine sea spray that settled on her hands, leaving sparkling salt crystals as it dried. Fairy dust, she used to call it. She breathed in the fresh air and absorbed the view: tangerine sky and dove-gray sea, ripples on the surface of both, like dragon scales. She savored the sharp tang of vinegar on her tongue, letting her thoughts wander as the sun slowly melted into the sea, turning it to liquid gold.
Hazel Gaynor
Promise and pie-crust are made to be broken.
Jonathan Swift
Girl going past clinging to a young man's arm. Putting up her face like a duck to the moon. Drinking joy. Green in her eyes. Spinal curvature. No chin, mouth like a frog. Young man like a pug. Gazing down at his sweetie with the face of a saint reading the works of God. Hold on, maiden, you've got him. He's your boy. Look out, Puggy, that isn't a maiden you see before you, it's a work of imagination. Nail him, girlie. Nail him to the contract. Fly laddie, fly off with your darling vision before she turns into a frow, who spends all her life thinking of what the neighbours think.
Joyce Cary
Londoners, with their noses pressed to cold windows, smiled, for a mid-summer storm was raging across England. Zues had blessed their land, taking away the bright happy sun and replacing it with gusty winds, lashing rain and utter misery.
Anya Wylde
HIGGINS. Have you no morals, man?DOOLITTLE [unabashed] Cant afford them, Governor. Neither could you if you was as poor as me.
George Bernard Shaw
We're starting our own religion at last. The Order of Frisbeetarians. We believe that when you die, your soul ascends to a rooftop and you can never get it back.
Bono
Cut off from the land that bore us,Betrayed by the land we find,Where the brightest have gone before us,And the dullest are most behind - Stand, stand to your glasses, steady!'T is all we have left to prize:One cup to the dead already - Hurrah for the next that dies!
Bartholomew Dowling
Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
Jonathan Swift
The dead are my dark matter, filling up impalpably the empty spaces of the world.
John Banville
Money is like gasoline during a road trip. You don’t want to run out of gas on your trip, but you’re not doing a tour of gas stations.
Tim O'Reilly
I've learned that to be courageous is to feel fear within, every step of the way. Courage does not take over, it fights and struggles through every word you say and every step you take. It's a battle or a dance as to whether to let it pervade. It takes courage to overcome, but it takes extreme fear to be courageous.
Cecelia Ahern
On the Ning Nang NongWhere the Cows go Bong!And the Monkeys all say Boo!Theres a Nang Nong NingWhere the trees go Ping!And the tea pots Jibber Jabber JooOn the Nong Ning NangAll the Mice go Clang!And you just cant catch em when they do!So its Ning Nang Nong!Cows go Bong!Nong Nang Ning!Trees go Ping!Nong Ning Nang!The mice go Clang!What a noisy place to belong,Is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!
Spike Milligan
The well bred contradict other people. the wise contradict themselves.
Oscar Wilde