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Quotes by Irish Authors

"I certainly have been guilty of trying to sweep things under the carpet."


"At first I threw my weight upon my heels, as one does naturally in a boot, and was a good deal bruised, but after a few hours I learned the natural walk of man, and could follow my guide in any portion of the island."

"The best thanks we could offer those who went before and raised the Irish working class from their knees was to press forward with determination and enthusiasm towards the ultimate goal of their efforts, a Co-operative Commonwealth for Ireland."

"It is a most disgraceful shame the way in which Irishmen are brought up. They are ashamed of their language, institutions, and of everything Irish."

"Modesty seldom resides in a breast that is not enriched with nobler virtues."

"The American white relegates the black to the rank of shoeshine boy, and he concludes from this that the black is good for nothing but shining shoes."

"You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?""

"Why should Ireland be treated as a geographical fragment of England - Ireland is not a geographical fragment, but a nation."

"Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable."

"Irish Americans are no more Irish than Black Americans are Africans."

"The surest way to fail is not to determine to succeed."

"You told me you had destroyed it.""I was wrong. It has destroyed me."

"Evil prospers when good men do nothing."

"Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire."

"Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes."

"To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness."


"I enjoyed seven years at Wimbledon and there were high and low points."

"All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship."

"Listening is a discipline. It's all about being present at that moment in time."

"The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny."

"If we admit a thing so extraordinary as the creation of this world, it should seem that we admit something strange, and odd, and new to human apprehension, beyond any other miracle whatsoever."

"The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it."

"Friendship will not stand the strain of very much good advice for very long."

"Theater is dangerously open to repetition. It's exciting when you hit on a new way."

"I read all the time. I was reading a book I admire very much by Alice McDermot called Charming Billy."

"A part of sexuality may go to research, and a much larger part must lead to aesthetic creation. The art of the future will, because of the very opportunities and materials it will have at its command, need an infinitely stronger formative impulse than it does now."

"There is nothing politically right that is morally wrong."

"That action is best which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers."
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