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Quotes by Irish Authors
"There would never have been a British Ballet without Diaghilev. He had a wonderful influence."
"It's the same thing in a way, although writing a book is a very solitary thing."
"Light heat all known all white heart breath no sound."
"I've a great fancy to see my own funeral afore I die."
"A week of sweeping fogs has passed over and given me a strange sense of exile and desolation. I walk round the island nearly every day, yet I can see nothing anywhere but a mass of wet rock, a strip of surf, and then a tumult of waves."
"They're cheering a young lad, the champion playboy of the Western World."
"It's a lot more comfortable, I must say. Ummm, I didn't think I'd be playing with another band, I kinda thought I was through with that, but I make an exception because they're nice people."
"It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics."
"Well, there's no one at all, they do be saying, but is deserving of some punishment from the very minute of his birth."
"To unfold the secret laws and relations of those high faculties of thought by which all beyond the merely perceptive knowledge of the world and of ourselves is attained or matured, is a object which does not stand in need of commendation to a rational mind."
"If you want to be a grocer, or a general, or a politician, or a judge, you will invariably become it; that is your punishment. If you never know what you want to be, if you live what some might call the dynamic life but what I will call the artistic life, if each day you are unsure of who you are and what you know you will never become anything, and that is your reward."
"I mean I grew up in Ireland, so one would have to be consciously blinkered not to have reflected on the issue of political violence because that was the story since I was 19 years old or 20."
"Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere."
"I have no qualifications to do anything else and there weren't any formal application forms you had to fill in for stand-up, so I thought I'd give that a twist."
"I love working with young people, which is to me a big kick."
"The notion that one will not survive a particular catastrophe is, in general terms, a comfort since it is equivalent to abolishing the catastrophe."
"A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk."
"When the heart flies out before the understanding, it saves the judgment a world of pains."
"You can safely appeal to the United Nations in the comfortable certainty that it will let you down."
"In this context the British and Irish governments will have to promote a new, imaginative and dynamic alternative in which both governments will share power in the north."
"Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy."
"I think there's a bit of the devil in everybody. There's a bit of a priest in everybody, too, but I enjoyed playing the devil more. He was more fun."
"The most important things to do in the world are to get something to eat, something to drink and somebody to love you."
"After the spiritual powers, there is no thing in the world more unconquerable than the spirit of nationality. The spirit of nationality in Ireland will persist even though the mightiest of material powers be its neighbor."
"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."
"Marching thus at night, a battalion is doubly impressive. The silent monster is full of restrained power; resolute in its onward sweep, impervious to danger, it looks a menacing engine of destruction, steady to its goal, and certain of its mission."
"No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found."
"Mark my words. Perception is reality and how someone perceives you is their reality."
"I can't go on. I'll go on."
"I don't regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does. There was no pleasure I did not experience."
"The latter part of a wise person's life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier."
"The true measure of a man is what he would do if he knew he would never be caught."
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