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Quotes by Irish Authors
"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."
"Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting."
"You see continuous movement is the important thing here. Those who remain in one position and then lie to themselves about their progress are the ones in real trouble."
"The heretic is always better dead. And mortal eyes cannot distinguish the saint from the heretic."
"Never waste jealousy on a real man: it is the imaginary man that supplants us all in the long run."
"Make sure everyone, who works with you or for you, feels the need to tell others about the incredible experience."
"A man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage."
"I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex."
"Everything is going to be fine in the end. If it's not fine it's not the end."
"Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve."
"Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different."
"I happened to look up and there it was. All over and done with, at last. I sat on for a few moments with the ball in my hand and the dog yelping and pawing at me. (Pause.) Moments. Her moments, my moments (Pause.) The dog's moments."
"It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes."
"I can write no stately proemAs a prelude to my lay;From a poet to a poemI would dare to say.For if of these fallen petalsOne to you seem fair,Love will waft it till it settlesOn your hair.And when wind and winter hardenAll the loveless land,It will whisper of the garden,You will understand."
"There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence. No other activity was like it. To project one's soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one's own intellectual views echoed back to one with all the added music of passion and youth; to convey one's temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid or a strange perfume: there was a real joy in that--perhaps the most satisfying joy left to us in an age so limited and vulgar as our own, an age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly common in its aims...."
"I have set my mind to make sure I am prepared to accept success, whatever the trials ahead, whatever the work required."
"Asking the appropriate questions means understanding exactly what your customer is trying to achieve."
"How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive."
"A strange sense of loss came over him. He felt that Dorian Gray would never again be to him all that he had been in the past. Life had come between them.... His eyes darkened, and the crowded, flaring streets became blurred to his eyes. When the cab drew up at the theatre, it seemed to him that he had grown years older."
"The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react."
"Beauty is a form of Genius--is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in the dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it."
"Actions are the first tragedy in life, words are the second. Words are perhaps the worst. Words are merciless."
"In designing the scenery and costumes for any of Shakespeare's plays, the first thing the artist has to settle is the best date for the drama. This should be determined by the general spirit of the play more than by any actual historical references which may occur in it."
"It would kill the past, and when that was dead, he would be free."
"Marco Polo had seen the inhabitants of Zipangu place rose-colored pearls in the mouths of the dead. A sea-monster had been enamoured of the pearl that the diver brought to King Perozes, and had slain the thief, and mourned for seven moons over its loss."
"It often seems to me that art conceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals him."
"The thought of two thousand people crunching celery at the same time horrified me."
"Perhaps one never seems so much at one's ease as when one has to play a part."
"As for being poisoned by a book, there is no such thing as that. Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame."
"And, certainly to him Life itself was the first, the greatest, of the arts, and for it all the other arts seemed to be but a preparation."
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