top of page
.png){kind=small}
Quotes by Irish Authors
"Don't think you can frighten me by telling me that I am alone. France is alone. God is alone. And the loneliness of God is His strength."
"He watched the scene and thought of life; and (as always happened when he thought of life) he became sad. A gentle melancholy took possession of him. He felt how useless it was to struggle against fortune, this being the burden of wisdom which the ages had bequeathed him."
"I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them."
"Most of all she loved that when she hugged him her head would rest neatly just below his chin, where she could feel his breath lightly blowing her hair and tickling her head."
"Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination."
"Failure is only the name that we give to our mistakes."
"In order to be company he must display a certain mental activity. But it need not be of a high order. Indeed it might be argued the lower the better. Up to a point. The lower the order of mental activity the better the company. Up to a point."
"I am charging you with the protection of my mother and friends, not to mention keeping my younger self off the Internet. He is as dangerous as Opal."
"The British Government and the Irish Government have accepted very clearly the Mitchell Report."
"You are unjust to women in England. And till you count what is a a shame in a woman to be an infamy in a man, you will always be unjust, and Right, that pillar of fire, and Wrong, that pillar of cloud, will be made dim to your eyes, or be not seen at all, or if seen, not regarded."
"Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing."
"Well is it known that ambition can creep as well as soar."
"I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays."
"Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience."
"Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race."
"I know Sir John will go though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs."
"I will not let those, who cannot recognise how I can be of service, dissuade me from showing them how I can help."
"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing."
"Brutes find out where their talents lie a bear will not attempt to fly."
"There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating - people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing."
"There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel that no one else has the right to blame us."
"Ah! Happy they whose hearts can break. And peace of pardon win! How else may man make straight his path. And cleanse his soul from sin? How else but through a broken heart. May the Lord Christ enter in?"
"We must design how we wish to be perceived, and then we must work even harder to continuously recreate and re-evaluate that perception."
"I'm a man of simple tastes. I'm always satisfied with the best."
"It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little. I discern great sanity in the Greek attitude. They never chattered about sunsets, or discussed whether the shadows on the grass were really mauve or not. But they saw that the sea was for the swimmer, and the sand for the feet of the runner. They loved the trees for the shadow that they cast, and the forest for its silence at noon."
"The truth sticks in our throats with all the sauces it is served with: it will never go down until we take it without any sauce at all."
"Then she gave one last burst of music. The white Moon heard it, and she forgot the dawn, and lingered on in the sky. The red rose heard it, and it trembled all over with ecstasy, and opened its petals to the cold morning air. Echo bore it to her purple cavern in the hills, and woke the sleeping shepherds from their dreams. It floated through the reeds of the river, and they carried its message to the sea."
"In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it."
"She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman."
"From Mozart I learnt to say important things in a conversational way."
bottom of page