Quotes by Irish Authors - Page 11

The war was about vanity, he said. It was about old men who couldn't look in the mirror anymore and so they sent the young out to die. Was was a get-together of the vain. They wanted it simple--hate your enemy, know nothing of him.
Mccann Colum
Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.
Edmund Burke
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.
George Bernard Shaw
It had ever, as I told the reader, been one of the singular blessings of my life, to be almost every hour of it miserably in love with some one....
Laurence Sterne
The artist, like the God of creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails
James Joyce
We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
Jonathan Swift
...but as his father used to say when he had a few drinks taken, you couldn't expect bloody miracles when you were talking about God.
Joseph O'Connor
People need a moral code, to help them make decisions. All this bio-yogurt virtue and financial self-righteousness are just filling the gap in the market. But the problem is that it's all backwards. It's not that you do the right thing and hope it pays off; the morally right thing is by definition the thing that gives the biggest payoff.
Tana French
AutumnThe season between summer and winter, comprising in the Northern Hemisphereusually the months of September, October and November.A period of maturity.
Cecelia Ahern
I'd rather eat nothing than eat a carrot.
Marian Keyes
There is cruelty in the world Eliza, you can see that, can't you?It surrounds us. It breathes on us. We spend our life trying to escape it.
John Boyne
Grammar is the logic of speech even as logic is the grammar of reason.
Richard Trench
I don’t see Number Four though—oh.” Number Four, wearing an unflattering chartreuse jacket, was sitting alone on the chewed-up grass, despondently licking his testicles. “Hmm, I don’t know, Bel . .
Paul Murray
To learn one must be humble. But life is the great teacher.
James Joyce
Goodbye, Room." I wave up at Skylight. "Say goodbye," I tell Ma. "Goodbye, Room."Ma says it but on mute.I look back one more time. It's like a crater, a hole where something happened. Then we go out the door.
Emma Donoghue
You can lose a man like that by your own death but not by his.
George Bernard Shaw
I’d live anywhere, - in one room, in the castle ruin right now – if it meant we could all just be together.
Cecelia Ahern
I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.
George Bernard Shaw
When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport: wlien the tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.
George Bernard Shaw
Old, is it?" the man asks."Yes, very.""Pre-war, is it?""Yes," I say. "If by war you mean the Norman invasion.
Garrett Carr
All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.
Edmund Burke
The thing itself, the first thing, will never do us alone, we must be elaborating, improving, poeticising.
Sebastian Barry
I am as you say a "skeleton" and i have been for quite a while
SkullDuggery Pleasant
Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men.
George Bernard Shaw
After all, no relationship could function or survive under the burden of total honesty.
John Connolly
It's like learning to ride a unicorn. You never forget.
Eoin Colfer
Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us.
Oscar Wilde
When, some months later, Zoltan emailed me about his decision to run for president, I immediately called him. The first thing I asked was what his wife thought of the plan.“Well, in a way,” he said, “it was Lisa who gave me the idea. Remember how I said she wanted me to do something concrete, get some kind of a proper job?”“I do,” I said. “Although I’m guessing running for president on the immortality platform was not what she had in mind.”“That’s correct,” he confirmed. “It took a little while for her to come around to the idea.”“How did you break it to her?”“I left a note on the refrigerator,” he said, “and went out for a couple hours.
Mark O'Connell
The way one is envisaged by other people - what easier way is there of envisaging oneself? There is a fatalism in one's acceptance of it. Solitude is not the solution, one feels followed. Choice - choice of those who are to surround one, choice of those most likely to see you rightly - is the only escape.
Elizabeth Bowen
Sometimes things happen that give me cause to believe I no longer exist. Car park barriers which do not lift when I drive towards them, automatic doors which do not open automatically as I approach.
Sara Baume
By their very nature, idiots do not have the intellectual capacity to identify genius. All that idiots are mentally equipped to recognize are other idiots.
Dermot Davis
Estragon: They're too bigVladimir: Perhaps you'll have socks some day
Samuel Beckett
The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.
George Bernard Shaw
The wait is long, my dream of you does not end.
Nuala O'Faolain
Ladies and gentleman," he said over the speakers, "welcome aboard this recently liberated Gulfstream V. If I could have your attention for just a few moments, I'd like to go over the safety features of this aircraft. It has an engine, to make us go, and wings, to keep us in the air. There are seatbelts, which won't do you an awful lot of good if we fly into the side of a mountain.
Derek Landy
Men are wise in proportion not to their experience but to their capacity for experience.
George Bernard Shaw
We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.
Oscar Wilde
Have to be honest with you Darquesse, I cannot feel that. That must be one of your special abilities, because to me, it looks like you just killed a whole bunch of people for no reason.""Oh," said Darquesse. "That's so sad
Derek Landy
When people are warm, they cannot stand picking terms.
Maria Edgeworth
There is no use indicting words, they are no shoddier than what they peddle.
Samuel Beckett
If you go to heaven without being naturally qualified for it you will not enjoy it there.
George Bernard Shaw
Ah, yeah. Yeah, tis awful all right. Well, your Mam wanted me to talk to you about it, but…’He stopped; he didn’t know what else to say.‘Yeah? Ah, I know the score, Dad. She wants me to be careful, is it?’‘Ah, no. Well, yeah; there’s that, of course. No, she wanted… well, if you’d any questions, youknow?’ I wasn’t sure if he wanted me to say yes, or if he just wanted me to say no, and save himhaving to be awkward. He looked lost. I felt like I wanted to save him‘No, I’ve no questions, Dad. It’s all right, shur.’ He looked at me then. His eyes went wet, likehe was going to start bawling. If we were in a film, he might have hugged me. But we were inLimerick, so he just said:‘Well, so,’ and put his one glove back on.From The Boys of Summer
Ciarán West
And to the little Squirrel who lived in the fir-tree, and was lonely, he said, 'Where is my mother?' And the Squirrel answered, 'Thou hast slain mine. Dost thou seek to slay thine also?
Oscar Wilde
Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.
Edmund Burke
Faeries, come take me out of this dull world,For I would ride with you upon the wind,Run on the top of the dishevelled tide,And dance upon the mountains like a flame.
W.B. Yeats
One day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second.
Samuel Beckett
Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.
Oscar Wilde
It's my rule never to lose my temper until it would be detrimental to keep it.
Seán O'Casey
The nature of compassion isn't coming to terms with your own suffering and applying it to others: It's knowing that other folks around you suffer and, no matter what happens to you, no matter how lucky or unlucky you are, they keep suffering. And if you can do something about that, then you do it, and you do it without whining or waving your own fuckin' cross for the world to see. You do it because it's the right thing to do.
John Connolly
Sometomes that's all people ever really need. Just to know.
Cecelia Ahern
A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure.
Oscar Wilde
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.
James Joyce
What is the use of discussing a man's abstract right to food or medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them. In that deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid of the farmer and the physician rather than the professor of metaphysics.
Edmund Burke
Reluctant to return to the empty rooms of Bluebell Cottage, Olivia ate fish and chips on the harbor wall, dangling her legs over the side just like she used to as a little girl, even though it made her mam anxious.The breeze nipped at the back of her neck and whipped up a fine sea spray that settled on her hands, leaving sparkling salt crystals as it dried. Fairy dust, she used to call it. She breathed in the fresh air and absorbed the view: tangerine sky and dove-gray sea, ripples on the surface of both, like dragon scales. She savored the sharp tang of vinegar on her tongue, letting her thoughts wander as the sun slowly melted into the sea, turning it to liquid gold.
Hazel Gaynor
There will always be reservations, things one must leave out, events one can’t explain without handing over a full map of one’s life, unfolding it, making clear that all the lines and contours stand for long days and nights when things were bad or good, or when things were too small to be described at all: when things just were. This is a life.
Colm Tóibín
Science Fiction is a safe, fertile arena in which to rehearse the potential scientific facts of tomorrow
Stewart Stafford
And my desire,' he said, 'is a desire that is as long as a year; but it is love given to an echo, the spending of grief on a wave, a lonely fight with a shadow, that is what my love and my desire have been to me.
Lady Augusta Gregory
Proust has pointed out that the predisposition to love creates it's own objects: is this not also true of fear?
Elizabeth Bowen
Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.
Mary Harris Jones
It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain.It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.
Oscar Wilde