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Quotes by Irish Authors
"No one ever reached the top of a mountain by digging underneath it."
"I'll record what I've learnt on the subject of what I sell. What it actually is means little to anyone other than me, but what it does and how it helps, means everything to those who require it."
"Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo."
"Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you."
"Out of the unreal shadows of the night comes back the real life that we had known."
"To influence a person is to give him one's own soul."
"Inteligence lives longer than beauty."
"The most distinguished persons become more revolutionary as they grow older."
"I won't tell you that the world matters nothing, or the world's voice, or the voice of society. They matter a good deal. They matter far too much. But there are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely-or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands. You have that moment now. Choose!"
"From the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence over me. I was dominated, soul brain and power."
"Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability."
"Friendship's the privilege of private men; for wretched greatness knows no blessing so substantial."
"What was youth at best? A green, an unripe time, a time of shallow moods, and sickly thoughts."
"People who count their chickens before they are hatched act very wisely because chickens run about so absurdly that it's impossible to count them accurately."
"Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question of nerves and fibers and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams."
"You silly Arthur! If you knew anything about...anything, which you don't, you would know that I adore you. Everyone in London knows it except you. It is a public scandal the way I adore you. I have been going about for the last six months telling the whole of society that I adore you. I wonder you consent to have anything to say to me. I have no character left at all. At least, I feel so happy that I am quite sure I have no character left at all."
"What is certain is this, that I never rested in that way again, my feet obscenely resting on the earth, my arms on the handlebars and on my arms my head, rocking and abandoned. It is indeed a delporable sight, a deplorable example, for the people, who so need to be encouraged, in their bitter toil, and to have before their eyes manifestations of strength only, of courage and joy, without which they might collapse, at the end of the day, and roll on the ground."
"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."
"What shadows we are what shadows we pursue!"
"Artemis felt like he was six again and caught hacking the school computers trying to make the test questions harder."
"The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself."
"It was long since I had longed for anything and the effect on me was horrible."
"Pasteboard pies and paper flowers are being banished from the stage by the growth of that power of accurate observation which is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it...."
"What fire does not destroy, it hardens."
"It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact."
"There were poisons so subtle that to know their properties one had to sicken of them. There were maladies so strange that one had to pass through them if one sought to understand their nature."
"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live."
"Then I realised that I was the god on this occasion. I had tried to help the bluebottle, but it wouldn't let me. And then I felt sorry for God because I understood his frustration. Sometimes when people offer a helping hand, it gets pushed away. People always want to help themselves first."
"You have asked me what I would do and what I would not do. I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use- silence, exile, and cunning."
"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion."
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