Quotes by Irish Authors

Unseen, one summer eve, you kissed me in four places.
James Joyce
To influence a person is to give him one's own soul.
Oscar Wilde
Tale-bearers are as bad as the tale-makers.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Keyholes are the occasions of more sin and wickedness, than all other holes in this world put together.
Laurence Sterne
If there is anything more annoying in the world than having people talk about you, it is certainly having no one talk about you.
Oscar Wilde
Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that.
Oscar Wilde
I do not think my life would make a very interesting book,' I say. 'I feel I can speak with a certain amount of authority here.
Paul Murray
To say that a great genius is mad, while at the same time recognizing his artistic merit, is no better than to say he is rheumatic or diabetic.
James Joyce
The luxury of age was the giving up of vanity.
Colum McCann
It's amazing how, over the course of one's life, you collect so much music you don't like, so many movies you don't watch and so many books you have no intention of reading. If only regret stopped with the trivial things such as these.
Ellie Rose McKee
Personally of course I regret everything.Not a word, not a deed, not a thought, not a need,not a grief, not a joy, not a girl, not a boy,not a doubt, not a trust, not a scorn, not a lust,not a hope, not a fear, not a smile, not a tear,not a name, not a face, no time, no place...that I do not regret, exceedingly.An ordure, from beginning to end.
Samuel Beckett
But you don’t really mean to say that you couldn’t love me if my name wasn’t Ernest?GWENDOLEN: But your name is Ernest.JACK: Yes, I know it is. But supposing it was something else? Do you mean to say you couldn’t love me
Oscar Wilde
Crack, crack—crack, crack—crack, crack—so this is Paris! quoth I (continuing in the same mood)—and this is Paris!—humph!—Paris! cried I, repeating the name the third time— The first, the finest, the most brilliant— —The streets however are nasty; But it looks, I suppose, better than it smells—crack, crack—crack, crack—
Laurence Sterne
O bid me mount and sail up thereAmid the cloudy wrack,For Peg and Meg and Paris' loveThat had so straight a back,Are gone away, and some that stayHave changed their silk for sack.
W.B. Yeats
When good Americans die, they go to Paris.
Oscar Wilde
By the time the Freedom Flights, to use the US description, came to an end, more than 260,000 Cubans had been airlifted to the United States, every one of them registered by the Swiss before they left Cuba.
Clare O'Dea
Only serfs or ex-serfs find it necessary to draw up a statement of their 'rights'.
Flann O'Brien
I think it is true to say only an inferior person has rights. When you hear a person talking about his rights, you may be sure he is trying to gain by dint of shouting something which he lacks ( or had and lost) by reason of some culpable deficiency in himself.
Flann O'Brien
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
Numbers are the only things you can trust in this life, Kerstin; they will keep you sane.’Summer Lies Bleeding
Nuala Casey
Why should I blame her that she filled my daysWith misery, or that she would of late Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,Or hurled the little streets upon the great, Had they but courage equal to desire?What could have made her peaceful with a mindThat nobleness made simple as a fire,With beauty like a tightened bow, a kindThat is not natural in an age like thisBeing high and solitary and most stern?Why, what could she have done, being what she is?Was there another Troy for her to burn?
W.B. Yeats
I owe all my originality, such as it is, to my determination not to be a literary man. Instead of belonging to a literary club I belong to a municipal council. Instead of drinking and discussing authors and reviews, I sit on committees with capable practical greengrocers and bootmakers... Keep away from books and from men who get their ideas from books, and your own books will always be fresh.
George Bernard Shaw
Write what is important to you, regardless of fashion or marketability or anything like that – all those things are so far out of your control that you may as well not think about them. Of course, this may mean you’ll never be published but that’s a risk we all take every single time we set hands to keyboard or pen to paper. For me, if I can sit back at the end of a project and say, ‘yes, I stayed honest, I said what I wanted to say, and I made it sing to the best of my ability’, then I’m happy enough. Of course, if anyone wants to buy the damned thing off me when I’m done, that’s jam I won’t refuse.
Celine Kiernan
Cascando"why not merely the despaired ofoccasion ofwordshedis it not better abort than be barrenthe hours after you are gone are so leadenthey will always start dragging too soonthe grapples clawing blindly the bed of wantbringing up the bones the old lovessockets filled once with eyes like yoursall always is it better too soon than neverthe black want splashing their facessaying again nine days never floated the lovednor nine monthsnor nine livessaying againif you do not teach me I shall not learnsaying again there is a lasteven of last timeslast times of begginglast times of lovingof knowing not knowing pretendinga last even of last times of sayingif you do not love me I shall not be lovedif I do not love you I shall not lovethe churn of stale words in the heart againlove love love thud of the old plungerpestling the unalterablewhey of wordsterrified againof not lovingof loving and not youof being loved and not by youof knowing not knowing pretendingpretendingI and all the others that will love youif they love youunless they love you
Samuel Beckett
Perhaps one never seems so much at one's ease as when one has to play a part.
Oscar Wilde
Art, like Nature, has her monsters
Oscar Wilde
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.
Oscar Wilde
Most people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honour.
Oscar Wilde
You think Bernadette Maguire killed him?”“Uh… no. She’s, like I said, she’s old.”“Old people can kill people too.”“I know, but…”“She could be a ninja.”“She’s not a ninja, for God’s sake. She’s somebody’s great grandmother.”“I want you to think carefully about this, Kenny. Have you ever seen her with a sword?”“What?”“How about throwing stars?”“This is ridiculous.”“Have you ever seen her dressed up as a ninja? That would have been my first clue.”The girl sucked in her cheeks so she wouldn't laugh out loud.
Derek Landy
Sometomes that's all people ever really need. Just to know.
Cecelia Ahern
Those who know the least obey the best.
George Farquhar
She bid me take love easy as the leaves grow on the tree But I being young and foolish with her would not agree.
William Butler Yeats
It's all that the young can do for the old to shock them and keep them up to date.
George Bernard Shaw
I've put my genius into my life I've only put my talent into my works.
Oscar Wilde
Proper words in proper places make the true definition of a style.
Jonathan Swift
When you're a writer you no longer see things with the freshness of the normal person. There are always two figures that work inside you and if you are at all intelligent you realize that you have lost something. But I think there has always been this dichotomy in a real writer. He wants to be terribly human and he responds emotionally but at the same time there's this cold observer who cannot cry.
Brian Moore
My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say and then to say it with the utmost levity.
George Bernard Shaw
Writing when properly managed (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation.
Laurence Sterne
Never believe anything a writer tells you about himself. A man comes to believe in the end the lies he tells himself about himself.
George Bernard Shaw
Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.
J.P. Donleavy
This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back again.
Oscar Wilde
Never despair but if you do work on in despair.
Edmund Burke
There was all the world and his wife.
Jonathan Swift
This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.
Laurence Sterne
This world is all a fleeting show For man's illusion given The smiles of joy the tears of woe Deceitful shine deceitful flow - There's nothing true but Heaven.
George Moore
You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.
George Bernard Shaw
The world is like a board with holes in it and the square men have got into the round holes and the round into the square.
Bishop Berkeley
We must stand together if we don't there will be no victory for any one of us.
Mother Jones
Fortune is ever seen accompanying industry.
Oliver Goldsmith
When I was a young man I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. I didn't want to be a failure so I did ten times more work.
George Bernard Shaw
I work as my father drank.
George Bernard Shaw
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
Oscar Wilde
The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.
George Bernard Shaw
England and America are two countries separated by the same language.
George Bernard Shaw
A very great part of the mischiefs that vex this world arises from words.
Edmund Burke
The time I've lost in wooing In watching and pursuing The light that lies In woman's eyes Has been my heart's undoing.
George Moore
Come live in my heart and pay no rent.
Samuel Lover
Now or never was the time.
Laurence Sterne
There is no such thing as romance in our day women have become too brilliant nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman.
Oscar Wilde
Woman's dearest delight is to wound Man's self-conceit though Man's dearest delight is to gratify hers.
George Bernard Shaw