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Quotes by Irish Authors
"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."
"No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating."
"Her lips touched his brain as they touched his lips, as though they were a vehicle of some vague speech and between them he felt an unknown and timid preasure, darker than the swoon of sin, softer than sound or odor."
"Tonight, history was going to be made. And it wasn't the discovery-of-radium, first-man-on-the-moon happy kind of history. It was the Spanish-Inquisition, here-comes-the-Hindenburg bad kind of history."
"A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors."
"Pity is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatesoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with the human sufferer."
"You have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don't even stir my curiosity."
"I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation."
"If it was my business, I wouldn't talk about it. It is very vulgar to talk about one's business. Only people like stockbroker's do that, and then merely at dinner parties."
"That is the injustice of a woman's lot. A woman has to bring up her children; and that means to restrain them, to deny them things they want, to set them tasks, to punish them when they do wrong, to do all the unpleasant things. And then the father, who has nothing to do but pet them and spoil them, comes in when all her work is done and stealstheir affection from her."
"What was after the universe?Nothing. But was there anything round the universe to show where it stopped before the nothing place began?"
"A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, The one I feed the most."
"Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect: like a man, who hath thought of a good repartee when the discourse is changed, or the company parted; or like a physician, who hath found out an infallible medicine, after the patient is dead."
"Bosie has insisted on stopping here for sandwiches. He is quite like a narcissus -- so white and gold. I will come either Wednesday or Thursday night to your rooms. Send me a line. Bosie is so tired: he lies like a hyacinth on the sofa, and I worship him."
"Friendship, according to Proust, is the negation of that irremediable solitude to which every human being is condemned."
"The greatest events of life often leave one unmoved; they pass out of consciousness, and, when one thinks of them, become unreal. Even the scarlet flowers of passion seem to grow out in the same meadow as the poppies of oblivion. We reject the burden of their memory, and have anodynes against them. But the little things, the things of no moment, remain with us."
"A representative owes not just his industry but his judgement."
"The artist like the God of the creation remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork invisible refined out of existence indifferent paring his fingernails."
"If a man treats life artistically, his brain is his heart."
"You are on your back at the foot of an aspen. In its trembling shade. She at right angles propped on her elbows head between her hands. Your eyes opened and closed have looked in hers looking in yours. In your dark you look in them again. Still. You feel on your face the fringe of her long black hair stirring in the still air. Within the tent of hair your faces are hidden from view. She murmurs, Listen to the leaves. Eyes in each other's eyes you listen to the leaves. In their trembling shade."
"Incontinent the void. The zenith. Evening again. When not night it will be evening. Death again of deathless day. On one hand embers. On the other ashes. Day without end won and lost. Unseen."
"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."
"But there are not two laws, that was the next thing I thought I understood, not two laws, one for the healthy, another for the sick, but one only to which all must bow, rich and poor, young and old, happy and sad. He was eloquent. I pointed out that I was not sad. That was a mistake. Your papers, he said, I knew it a moment later. Not at all, I said, not at all. Your papers! he cried. Ah my papers."
"The tiny Lilliputians surmise that Gulliver's watch may be his god, because it is that which, he admits, he seldom does anything without consulting."
"Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected."
"Oh well, is it hurting anyone? Because if its not and you've been given it, I'd as soon stop calling it a thing and start referring to it as a gift."
"How extraordinary the ordinary really is, a tool we all use to keep going, a template for sanity."
"I can quite understand a man accepting laws that protect private property, and admit of its accumulation, as long as he himself is able under those conditions to realise some form of beautiful and intellectual life. But it is almost incredible to me how a man whose life is marred and made hideous by such laws can possibly acquiesce in their continuance."
"Earn the Right - Ensure you put this chunk of Sales Tetris in place first and all the other pieces just take their own positions naturally."
"I'm a million different things every day of the week."
"You made me confess the fears that I have. But I will tell you also what I do not fear. I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for another or to leave whatever I have to leave. And I am not afraid to make a mistake, even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake and perhaps as long as eternity too."
"AutumnThe season between summer and winter, comprising in the Northern Hemisphereusually the months of September, October and November.A period of maturity."
"There are works which wait, and which one does not understand for a long time; the reason is that they bring answers to questions which have not yet been raised; for the question often arrives a terribly long time after the answer."
"One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age."
"Discover your own style. Don't try to repeat what has already been written - have the courage to do your own thing and don't be afraid to do something different."
"To become a spectator of one's own life is to escape the suffering of life."
"The philosopher is Nature's pilot. And there you have our difference: to be in hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer."
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