Quotes by Irish Authors - Page 47

We don't love people so much for the good they have done us, as for the good we have done them
Laurence Sterne
Conscience is a coward, and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent it seldom has justice enough to accuse.
Oliver Goldsmith
And I seemed to see myself ageing as swiftly as a day-fly. But the idea of ageing was not exactly the one which offered itself to me. And what I saw was more like a crumbling, a frenzied collapsing of all that had always protected me from all I was always condemned to be.
Samuel Beckett
Faeries, come take me out of this dull world,For I would ride with you upon the wind,Run on the top of the dishevelled tide,And dance upon the mountains like a flame.
W.B. Yeats
We all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well-informed man - that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.
Oscar Wilde
Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.
George Bernard Shaw
The whole point of being a good friend is being in the darkness. I’ll be your light, until you can be it yourself again.
Catherine Doyle
But Pescatore wasn’t leading a seminar on the morality of abortion. She wanted the jury to focus on the legal requirements for abortion providers in Pennsylvania. “The number one thing is the twenty-four-hour waiting period,” she told them. “It’s not like you can walk in and say, ‘I want an abortion,’ and you get it. A woman has a right to go in and be counseled before she has an abortion.” But Gosnell had flatly ignored the twenty-four-hour waiting period. He ignored the law, Pescatore said, out of simple greed. “Money. That was the only law that Dr. Gosnell knew,” she said. “You went to 3801 Lancaster Avenue where no laws were followed. None, zero.” The facts would show that Gosnell didn’t do “normal, legal abortions” largely because it was both cheaper and easier for him to induce labor, wait for the woman to give birth, and then kill the baby outside of the womb with scissors.
Ann McElhinney
The great pagan sadness of modern man is largely due to his premonition of ultimate disaster.
Francis Stuart Campbell
It would be fun,” Skulduggery nodded. ”I like kicking Wreath in the face. I haven't had a chance to do it nearly as much as I'd like.
Derek Landy
Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.Just as vulgarity is simply the conduct of other people.And falsehoods the truths of other people.Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself.To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.
Oscar Wilde
The Coming of Wisdom with TimeThough leaves are many, the root is one;Through all the lying days of my youthI swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;Now I may wither into the truth.
W.B. Yeats
I quite agree with Dr. Nordau's assertion that all men of genius are insane, but Dr. Nordau forgets that all sane people are idiots.
Oscar Wilde
Indeed if one had just seen him at the end of the evening with the dusk and the mist of the fenlands close behind him he might have believed that in the dusk and the mist was an army that followed this gay worn confident man. Had the army been there Niv was sane.Had the world accepted that an army was there, still he was sane. But the lonely fancy that had not fact to feed on, nor the fancy of any other for fellowship, was for its loneliness mad.
Lord Dunsany
The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.
George Bernard Shaw
All my patients are individuals with their own story to tell, their own set of problems and their own solution. Even where the symptoms of their distress are very similar, the roads that bring them to me are not. Each of them teaches me something important, just as each new patient I meet reminds me that there is always more to learn.
Suzanne O'Sullivan
Three quarks for Muster Mark!
James Joyce
A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of Hell.
George Bernard Shaw
[Chess] is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever, when they are only wasting their time.
George Bernard Shaw
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.
Oscar Wilde
I felt shame - I see this clearly, now - at the instinctive recognition in myself of an awful enfeebling fatalism, a sense that the great outcomes were but randomly connected to our endeavors, that life was beyond mending, that love was loss, that nothing worth saying was sayable, that dullness was general, that disintegration was irresistible.
Joseph O'Neill
The sun was already long past the spire when Garrick purchased a mug of coffee from his regular man on the tip of Oxford Street. But his palate had been educated by 21st century coffee, and he judged this mug as bilge water not fit for the Irish.
Eoin Colfer
Don't make it worse by thinking it's more painful than it actually is.
John Boyne
By thinking of things you could understand them.
James Joyce
When people agree with me I always feel that I must be wrong.
Oscar Wilde
Capitalism needs war.
Paul Murray
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
Oscar Wilde
There is nothing like race, is there?
Oscar Wilde
We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.
Oscar Wilde
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.
Oscar Wilde
My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.
John Dominic Crossan
Then the woman in the bed sat up and looked about her with wild eyes; and the oldest of the old men said: 'Lady, we have come to write down the names of the immortals,’ and at his words a look of great joy came into her face. Presently she, began to speak slowly, and yet eagerly, as though she knew she had but a little while to live, and, in English, with the accent of their own country; and she told them the secret names of the immortals of many lands, and of the colours, and odours, and weapons, and instruments of music and instruments of handicraft they held dearest; but most about the immortals of Ireland and of their love for the cauldron, and the whetstone, and the sword, and the spear, and the hills of the Shee, and the horns of the moon, and the Grey Wind, and the Yellow Wind, and the Black Wind, and the Red Wind. ("The Adoration of the Magi")
W.B. Yeats
The Sunlight on the GardenThe sunlight on the gardenHardens and grows cold,We cannot cage the minuteWithin its nets of gold,When all is toldWe cannot beg for pardon.Our freedom as free lancesAdvances towards its end;The earth compels, upon itSonnets and birds descend;And soon, my friend,We shall have no time for dances.The sky was good for flyingDefying the church bellsAnd every evil ironSiren and what it tells:The earth compels,We are dying, Egypt, dyingAnd not expecting pardon,Hardened in heart anew,But glad to have sat underThunder and rain with you,And grateful tooFor sunlight on the garden.
Louis MacNeice
Writing, when properly managed, (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation.
Laurence Sterne
There's a table with some catalogues and a guest book in the corner; there are artworks. Today, I need so badly to be inspired by them, even though I hate that word: inspiration. It crops up in too many advertisements, politcians' speeches, Disney films, its meaning obliterated. I refuse to be 'inspired' in the same insipid way that ad executives and politicians and Hollywood producers suggest I should be. What I need from these works is to be reminded of why I used to care about art—so much that I'd try and make it for myself.
Sara Baume
Everyone's future is in reality uncertain and full of unknown treasures from which all may draw unguessed prizes.
Lord Dunsany
We must have taken a wrong turn turning somewhere.""Where, Purgatory?" said Dozy. "We're in Hell.
John Connolly
A great sea fog is not homogenous--its density varies: it is honeycombed with streets, it has its caves of clear air, its cliffs of solid vapour, all shifting and changing place with the subtlety of legerdemain.
Henry de Vere Stacpoole
That long sigh again, above us. This time I saw it, moving through the branches. Like the trees were listening; like they would've been sad about us, sad for us, only they'd heard it all so many thousand times before.
Tana French
I forced myself to stop thinking about it. I went to the room in my brain where all my thoughts about Adam lived and disconnected the electricity and boarded up all the doors and windows, so nothing could get out.Obviously it was very unsightly. There were bound to be complaints from the neighboring thoughts. But I had no choice.
Marian Keyes
You have to study and learn so that you can make up your own mind. Stock your mind, stock your mind. It is your house of treasure and no one in the world can interfere with it. If you won the Irish Sweepstakes and bought a house that needed furniture would you fill it with bits and pieces of rubbish? Your mind is your house and if you fill it with rubbish from the cinemas, it will rot in your head. You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.
Frank McCourt
What nonsense people talk about happy marriages!" exclaimed Lord Henry. " A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.
Oscar Wilde
How pale the Princess is! Never have I seen her so pale. She is like the shadow of a white rose in a mirror of silver.
Oscar Wilde
You promise?""I cross the place where my heart used to be and wish to be even more deader than I am now.
Derek Landy
I can resist everything except temptation.
Oscar Wilde
For I did not want him to see, or to question me, for here contains already secrets, and my secrets are my fortune and my sanity.
Sebastian Barry
Little sister don't you worry about a thing todayTake the heat from the sunLittle sisterI know that everything is not okBut you're like honey on my tongueTrue love never can be rentBut only true love can keep beauty innocentI could never take a chanceOf losing love to find romanceIn the mysterious distanceBetween a man and a womanNo I could never take a chance'Cause I could never understandThe mysterious distanceBetween a man and a womanYou can run from loveAnd if it's really love it will find youCatch you by the heelBut you can't be numb for loveThe only pain is to feel nothing at allHow can I hurt when I'm holding you?I could never take a chanceOf losing love to find romanceIn the mysterious distanceBetween a man and a womanAnd you're the one, there's no-one elsewho makes me want to lose myselfIn the mysterious distanceBetween a man and a womanBrown eyed girl across the streetOn rue Saint DivineI thought this is the one for meBut she was already mineYou were already mine...Little sisterI've been sleeping in the street againLike a stray dogLittle sisterI've been trying to feel complete againBut you're gone and so is GodThe soul needs beauty for a soul mateWhen the soul wants...the soul waits ...No I could never take a chanceOf losing love to find romanceIn the mysterious distanceBetween a man and a womanFor love and FAITH AND SEX and fearAnd all the things that keep us hereIn the mysterious distanceBetween a man and a womanHow can I hurt when I'm holding you?
U2
It's my rule never to lose my temper until it would be detrimental to keep it.
Seán O'Casey
A child in London asked her father what autumn was, having heard it spoken of these days, and the father in explanation said it was a season, though not a major one. In cities, this father said, you did not feel autumn so much, not as you felt the heat of summer or the bite of winter air, or even the slush of spring. He said that, and then the next day sent for the child and said he had been talking nonsense. 'Autumn is on now,' he said. 'You can see it in the parks,' and he took his child for a nature walk.
William Trevor
A true artist takes no notice whatever of the public. The public are to him non-existent
Oscar Wilde
She lives the poetry she cannot write.
Oscar Wilde
And what about magic?” “What about it?” “Will you teach me?” “You don’t even know if you’re capable of doing magic.” “How do I find out? Is there a test or something?”“Yes, we cut off your head. If it grows back, you can do magic.
Derek Landy
Respect is love in plain clothes.
Frankie Byrne
What are we going to do when we get into the temple, anyway? Are we going to fight our way through the Necromancers on our
Derek Landy
A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.
Oscar Wilde
Experience isn't interesting till it begins to repeat itself-in fact till it does that it hardly is experience.
Elizabeth Bowen
Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.
W.B. Yeats
She strolled between shelves, looking at titles, smiling as she met old friends - books she had read three times or five times or a dozen. Just a title, or an author's name, would be enough to summon up happy images. Strange creatures like phoenixes and psammeads, moving under smokey London daylight of a hundred years before, in company with groups of bemused children; starships and new worlds and the limitless vistas of interstellar night, outer space challenged but never conquered; princesses in silver and golden dresses, princes and heroes carrying swords like sharpened lines of light, monsters rising out of weedy tarns, wild creatures that talked and tricked one another...
Diane Duane
When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them. But when they are away, we console ourselves for their absence by dwelling on their vices.
George Bernard Shaw
I think being a woman is like being Irish... Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the time.
Iris Murdoch