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Quotes by Irish Authors
"What you deserve will be down to you, and you alone."
"The secret of forgiving everything is to understand nothing."
"Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience."
"Where he comes from, the education he has received, his family history, his wealth, they matter not a jot, but the perception he conveys - that my, boy, is the key. If they believe he belongs - that he is part of the room - then he does, he is. And whichever room he is about to step into, then that is who he must become."
"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."
"In your dread of dictators you established a state of society in which every ward boss is a dictator, every financier a dictator, every private employer a dictator, all with the livelihood of the workers at their mercy, and no public responsibility. And to symbolize this state of things, this defeat of all government, you have set up in New York Harbour a monstrous idol which you call Liberty. The only thing that remains to complete this monument is to put on its pedestal the inscription written by Dante on the gate of Hell 'All hope abandon, ye who enter here."
"After having my baby I felt like I'd been introduced to my life, I slowed down, I paid more attention to simple things, I addressed a few issues in my own life, I even got married, I looked at what was important and what wasn't, and so I used that experience for inspiration."
"Nothing matters but the writing. There has been nothing else worthwhile... a stain upon the silence."
"It was the most perfect moment in my life.It was the last perfect moment in my life."
"Ah earth you old extinguisher."
"I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who would call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one."
"That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy."
"Or that passion to act a part that sometimes makes us do things finer than we are ourselves?"
"I need not repeat familiar arguments about the waste of teachers' time, and the difficulties thrown in the way of English children trying to learn their own language; or the fact that nobody without a visual memory for words ever succeeds in spelling conventionally, however highly educated he or she may be."
"He likewise directed, "that every senator in the great council of a nation, after he had delivered his opinion, and argued in the defence of it, should be obliged to give his vote directly contrary; because if that were done, the result would infallibly terminate in the good of the public."
"When a great genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against."
"Who would be willing to put up with less than the desired result, if they could afford to have it done properly?"
"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."
"Within this restless, hurried, modern worldWe took our hearts' full pleasure - You and I,And now the white sails of our ship are furled,And spent the lading of our argosy.Wherefore my cheeks before their time are wan,For very weeping is my gladness fled,Sorrow has paled my young mouth's vermilion,And Ruin draws the curtains of my bed.But all this crowded life has been to theeNo more than lyre, or lute, or subtle spellOf viols, or the music of the seaThat sleeps, a mimic echo, in the shell."
"Which painting in the National Gallery would I save if there was a fire? The one nearest the door of course."
"A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic."
"If you have designed your last day on earth, if you have decided how you wish to be thought of on your deathbed, only then can you start to plot a course to that point, to your ideal final destination."
"Think about it: if someone had found a way to manipulate human choice and free will " if someone actually had that kind of power " wouldn't it be a tad surprising if they then decided to share their secret with the masses in a book for $20? Not to mention how it would be just very slightly unethical."
"Look at the woebegone walk of him. Eaten a bad egg. Poached eyes on ghost."
"I've a thirst on me I wouldn't sell for half a crown.- Give it a name, citizen, says Joe.- Wine of the country, says he.- What's yours? says Joe.- Ditto MacAnaspey, says I.- Three pints, Terry, says Joe. And how's the old heart, citizen? says he."
"Happiness and beauty are by-products. Folly is the direct pursuit of happiness and beauty."
"The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole Life to reading my works."
"Estragon: And if he doesn't come?Vladimir: (after a moment of bewilderment) We'll see when the time comes."
"Ada: And why life? (Pause.) Why life, Henry? (Pause.) Is there anyone about?Henry: Not a living soul.Ada: I thought as much. (Pause.) When we longed to have it to ourselves there was always someone. Now that it does not matter the place is deserted."
"Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children."
"A nation without the means of reform is without the means of survival."
"To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable."
"Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions.""I hate them for it," cried Hallward. "An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. Some day I will show the world what is it; and for that the world shall never see my portrait of Dorian Gray."
"One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason."
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