Quotes by Irish Authors - Page 43

There was a lot to be said for a man’s capacity to be comfortable while alone.
John Connolly
I believe in those whom I love and trust. All else is foolishness. This god is as empty as his church. His followers choose to attribute all of their good fortune to him, but when he ignores their pleas or leaves them to suffer, they say only that he ignores their pleas or leaves them to suffer, they say only that he is beyond their understanding and abandon themselves to his will. What kind of god is that?
John Connolly
The way you walk is slash and burn.Like understatement's now a crime.
Justin Quinn
I could deny it if I liked. I could deny anything if I liked.
Oscar Wilde
To discover the mode of life or of art whereby my spirit could express itself in unfettered freedom.
James Joyce
It was not intended as a compliment. It was a confession. Now that I have made it, something seems to have gone out of me. Perhaps one should never put one's worship into words.
Oscar Wilde
The heart was made to be broken.
Oscar Wilde
VLADIMIR: Moron!ESTRAGON: Vermin!VLADIMIR: Abortion!ESTRAGON: Morpion!VLADIMIR: Sewer-rat!ESTRAGON: Curate!VLADIMIR: C
Samuel Beckett
Even things that are true can be proved.
Oscar Wilde
The miraculous intimacy we shared did not have the time to generate into resentful emotional bondage
Josephine Hart
What is certain is this, that I never rested in that way again, my feet obscenely resting on the earth, my arms on the handlebars and on my arms my head, rocking and abandoned. It is indeed a delporable sight, a deplorable example, for the people, who so need to be encouraged, in their bitter toil, and to have before their eyes manifestations of strength only, of courage and joy, without which they might collapse, at the end of the day, and roll on the ground.
Samuel Beckett
I like girls who eat Carrots. ~ Louis Tomlinson
One Direction
Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.
Oscar Wilde
He laughed to free his mind from his minds bondage.
James Joyce
How did that go” [Butler] asked. “Your first lengthy conversation with a girl your own age.”“Fabulous,” said Artemis, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “We’re planning a June wedding.
Eoin Colfer
I thought that the light-house looked lovely as hope,That star on life's tremulous ocean.
Thomas Moore
I had an uneventful few days," it told her. "The most exciting thing was an hour-long lecture from the headmaster on taking our studies seriously. He said next year's exam will arrive sooner than we think.""No, they won't," Valkyrie said, frowning. "They'll arrive next year, exactly when we expect them.""That's what I told him," the reflection nodded. "I don't think he's comfortable with logic, because he didn't look happy. He sent me to the Career Guidance counsellor, who asked me what I wanted to do after college."Valkyrie stowed her black clothes. "What did you say?""I told her I wanted to be a Career Guidance counsellor. She started crying, then accused me of mocking her. I told her if she wasn't happy in her job then she should look at other options, then pointed out that I was already doing her job better than she was. She gave me detention.
Derek Landy
There are some doubters even in the western villages. One woman told me last Christmas that she did not believe either in hell or in ghosts. Hell she thought was merely an invention got up by the priest to keep people good; and ghosts would not be permitted, she held, to go 'trapsin about the earth' at their own free will; 'but there are faeries,' she added, 'and little leprechauns, and water-horses, and fallen angels.' I have met also a man with a mohawk Indian tattooed upon his arm, who held exactly similar beliefs and unbeliefs. No matter what one doubts one never doubts the faeries, for, as the man with the mohawk Indian on his arm said to me, 'they stand to reason.' Even the official mind does not escape this faith. ("Reason and Unreason")
W.B. Yeats
…The more enormous our wealth, the more extensive our fears, all our possessions are paled up with new edicts every day, and hung round with gibbets to scare every invader.
Oliver Goldsmith
What is whiter than snow?' he said. 'The truth,' said Grania.'What is the best colour?' said Finn. 'The colour of childhood,' said she.'What is hotter than fire?' 'The face of a hospitable man when he sees a stranger coming in, and the house empty.''What has a taste more bitter than poison?' 'The reproach of an enemy.''What is best for a champion?' 'His doings to be high, and his pride to be low.''What is the best of jewels?' 'A knife.''What is sharper than a sword?' 'The wit of a woman between two men.''What is quicker than the wind?' said Finn then. 'A woman’s mind,' said Grania. And indeed she was telling no lie when she said that.
Lady Augusta Gregory
Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
Oscar Wilde
This book is about a salvation that takes place within our unknowing and dissatisfaction,
Peter Rollins
Sometimes Spiro missed the times when a troublesome worker was thrown out of a high window and that was the end of him. These days, if you threw someone out of a window, they'd phone their lawyer on the way down.
Eoin Colfer
She thought it was strange that the mere sensation of savouring the prospect of something could make her think for a while that is must be the prospect of home.
Colm Tóibín
My son's got the I.Q. Of a robot but I don't have the dough to send him to school.
Jonathan Dunne
He liked murder. Murder and long walks had been two of his favorite things when he was younger.
Derek Landy
Yet each man kills the thing he lovesBy each let this be heardSome do it with a bitter lookSome with a flattering wordThe coward does it with a kissThe brave man with a sword
Oscar Wilde
How far away the stars seem, and how farIs our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart!
W.B. Yeats
She catches sight of herself in her video-feed, her face contorted with fury. Wiping spittle from the sides of her mouth, she reaches behind her to grab her lip gloss and reapplies it. “And don’t even start thinking about what a bitch I am,” she says. Her eyes are steady, the heat receding from her skin. “This is not my fault. I’m just doing what we have been trained to do. This is who we are, freida. This is who we were designed to be.
Louise O'Neill
Gloria laughed at them and said that she’d overtaken grief a long time ago, that she was tired of everyone wanting to go to heaven, nobody wanting to die. The only thing worth grieving over, she said, was that sometimes there was more beauty in this life than the world could bear.
Colum McCann
Never believe anything a writer tells you about himself. A man comes to believe in the end the lies he tells himself about himself.
George Bernard Shaw
And whatever my life had been up to that day, it was another life after that. And that is the gospel truth.
Sebastian Barry
There is always danger for those who are afraid.
George Bernard Shaw
I don't want to see him alone. He says things that annoy me. He gives me good advice.
Oscar Wilde
How do you get on with your father ' Beleth asked.'Very well ' Pyrgus answered loyally although it was far from the truth.'I ate mine ' Beleth told him. 'He got old and feeble and useless but he wanted to hold on to power. So I took steps. Tasted disgusting - stringy tough smelly ... you know how fathers are - but it's the custom here. You're supposed to absorb the essence that way. Rank superstition of course but well ... tradition.
Herbie Brennan
People seldom improve when they have no other model but themselves to copy after.
Oliver Goldsmith
You can lose a man like that by your own death but not by his.
George Bernard Shaw
words...To lure the tribal shoals to epigram / And order.
Seamus Heaney
Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everybody in good society holds exactly the same opinions.
Oscar Wilde
Hey, bodyguard. You better get down to the gymnasium. This jumbo pixie guy is killing your sister." "Really?" said Butler, unconvinced. "Really. Juliet just does not seem to be herself. She can't put two moves together. It's pathetic, really. Everybody is betting against her." "I see," said Butler, straightening. Mulch held the door. "It's going to make things really interesting when you show up to help." Butler grinned. "I'm not coming to help. I just want to be there when she stops faking." "Ah," said Mulch, comprehension dawning on his face. "So I should switch my bet to Juliet?" "You certainly should" said Butler.
Eoin Colfer
Unfathomable mind: now beacon, now sea.
Samuel Beckett
I asked her to look at me and after a few moments - (pause) - after a few moments she did, but the eyes just slits, because of the glare I bent over her to get them in the shadow and they opened. (Pause. Low) Let me in.
Samuel Beckett
Sartre turns love into a ‘battle between two hypnotists in a closed room’.
Iris Murdoch
Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.
Iris Murdoch
That is the worst of women. They always want one to be good. And if we are good, when they meet us, they don't love us at all. They like to find us quite irretrievably bad, and to leave us quite unattractively good.
Oscar Wilde
I sat, a solitary man,In a crowded London shop,An open book and empty cupOn the marble table-top.While on the shop and street I gazedMy body of a sudden blazed;And twenty minutes more or lessIt seemed, so great my happiness,That I was blessed and could bless.
W.B. Yeats
Gazelles are leaping, feeding on the mountains. Near are lakes. Round their shores file shadows black of cedargroves. Aroma rises, a strong hair growth of resin. It burns, the orient, a sky of sapphire, cleft by the bronze flight of eagles. Under it lies the womancity, nude, white, still, cool, in luxury. A fountain murmurs among damask roses. Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet wine grapes. A wine of shame, lust, blood exudes, strangely murmuring.
James Joyce
Trust that man in nothing who has not a conscience in everything.
Laurence Sterne
An ignorant man, who is not fool enough to meddle with his clock, is however sufficiently confident to think he can safely take to pieces, and put together at his pleasure, a moral machine of another guise, importance and complexity, composed of far other wheels, and springs, and balances, and counteracting and co-operating powers. Men little think how immorally they act in rashly meddling with what they do not understand. Their delusive good intention is no sort of excuse for their presumption. They who truly mean well must be fearful of acting ill.
Edmund Burke
An aged man is but a paltry thing,A tattered coat upon a stick, unlessSoul clap its hands and sing, and louder singFor every tatter in its mortal dress
W.B. Yeats
I discovered that everything you do is in response to a request or a suggestion made to you by some other party either inside you or outside. Some of these suggestions are good and praiseworthy and some of them are undoubtedly delightful. But the majority of them are definitely bad and are pretty considerable sins as sins go.
Flann O'Brien
…Obviously, I have always wished I could remember what happened in that wood. The very few people who know about the whole Knocknaree thing invariably suggest, sooner or later, that I should try hypnotic regression, but for some reason I find the idea distasteful. I’m deeply suspicious of anything with a whiff of the New Age about it—not because of the practices themselves, which as far as I can tell from a safe distance may well have a lot to them, but because of the people who get involved who always seem to be the kind who corner you at parties to explain how they discovered that they are survivors and deserve to be happy. I worry that I might come out of hypnosis with that sugar-high glaze of self-satisfied enlightenment, like a seventeen-year-old who’s just discovered Kerouak, and start proselytizing strangers in pubs…
Tana French
All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
Samuel Beckett
The man had a smooth voice, like velvet. “I’m Detective Inspector Me. Unusual name, I know. My family were incredibly narcissistic. I’m lucky I escaped with any degree of humility at all, to be honest, but then I’ve always managed to exceed expectations. You are Kenny Dunne, are you not?”“I am.”“Just a few questions for you, Mr Dunne. Or Kenny. Can I call you Kenny? I feel we’ve become friends these past few seconds. Can I call you Kenny?”“Sure,” Kenny said, slightly baffled.“Thank you. Thank you very much. It’s important you feel comfortable around me, Kenny. It’s important we build up a level of trust. That way I’ll catch you completely unprepared when I suddenly accuse you of murder.
Derek Landy
Before verse can be human again it must learn to be brutal.
J. M. Synge
Colin reached out and grabbed hold o fine car engine, ripping it. He lifted it above his head. Solomon Cord dropped the wrench and said God it is true.
Michael Carroll
You are unjust to women in England. And till you count what is a a shame in a woman to be an infamy in a man, you will always be unjust, and Right, that pillar of fire, and Wrong, that pillar of cloud, will be made dim to your eyes, or be not seen at all, or if seen, not regarded.
Oscar Wilde
But we who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments. We have nothing else to think of. Suffering ― curious as it may sound to you ― is the means by which we exist, because it is the only means by which we become conscious of existing; and the remembrance of suffering in the past is necessary to us as the warrant, the evidence, of our continued identity.
Oscar Wilde
And, in the darkness, David closed his eyes as all that was lost was found again.
John Connolly
When the world has once begun to use us ill it afterwards continues the same treatment with less scruple or ceremony as men do to a whore.
Jonathan Swift