Quotes by Irish Authors - Page 12

That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.
Jonathan Swift
The artist like the God of the creation remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork invisible refined out of existence indifferent paring his fingernails.
James Joyce
Good artists exist simply in what they make and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are.
Oscar Wilde
When people agree with me I always feel that I must be wrong.
Oscar Wilde
A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.
George Bernard Shaw
The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.
George Bernard Shaw
Without art the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.
George Bernard Shaw
She looks as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.
Jonathan Swift
Proust has pointed out that the predisposition to love creates it's own objects: is this not also true of fear?
Elizabeth Bowen
It's my rule never to lose my temper until it would be detrimental to keep it.
Seán O'Casey
(A country where) the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.
Oscar Wilde
No wise man ever wished to be younger.
Jonathan Swift
My opportunities were still there nay they multiplied tenfold but the strength and youth to cope with them began to fail and to need eking out with the shifty cunning of experience.
George Bernard Shaw
Zsa Zsa Gabor when asked which of the Gabor women was the oldest said "She'll never admit it but I believe it is Mama." When men grow virtuous in their old age they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings.
Jonathan Swift
Dignity high station or great riches are in some sort necessary to old men in order to keep the younger at a distance who are otherwise too apt to insult them upon the score of their age.
Jonathan Swift
The old believe everything: the middle-aged suspect everything: the young know everything.
Oscar Wilde
The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.
Oscar Wilde
There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.
Brendan Behan
You have learned something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.
George Bernard Shaw
Adversity is a severe instructor. ... He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
Edmund Burke
Times of stress and difficulty are seasons of opportunity when the seeds of progress are sown.
Thomas F. Woodlock
He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skills. Our antagonist is our helper.
Edmund Burke
When the world has once begun to use us ill it afterwards continues the same treatment with less scruple or ceremony as men do to a whore.
Jonathan Swift
The play was a great success but the audience was a disaster.
Oscar Wilde
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
Oscar Wilde
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
George Bernard Shaw
Ambition can creep as well as soar.
Edmund Burke
I've hated some of them too. Most of them sometimes. And they do think differently, but that's a good thing, isn't it? A hand isn't a f-foot, but I need them both to hunt.
Peadar Ó Guilín
Sometimes you can be so deeply wrapped up in a person that the only way to deal with it is to use cruelty to push them away.
L.H. Cosway
in every pleasure, cruelty has its place...
Oscar Wilde
Don’t fool yourself: we all have a cruel streak. We keep it under lock and key either because we’re afraid of getting punished or because we believe this will somehow make a difference, make the world a better place.
Tana French
Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?
Bernard Shaw George
The high domed ceiling put me in mind of a skull, a brain, a mind. What did that make us, the readers?
Lia Mills
And she said that sometimes you wish for something very hard, it can kind of come true inside your own head, and it can seem real.
Sarah Moore Fitzgerald
With these words there came the rending scream of a shattered stirk and an angry troubling of the branches as the poor madman percolated through the sieve of a sharp yew, a wailing black meteor hurtling through green clouds, a human prickles.
Flann O'Brien
Hmmm... that's interesting.""What?""There seems to be a gentleman walking towards us with a shotgun.
Derek Landy
Just a few questions for you, Mr. Dunne. Or Kenny. Can I call you Kenny? I feel we've become friends in these past few seconds. Can I call you Kenny?
Derek Landy
We watch television and we play music, but mostly we've found ways to amuse ourselves." "Really?" Valkyrie asked. "Like what?"Plight's smile faded. "Like human sacrifice."He grabbed one arm and Lenka grabbed the other and Valkyrie cried out.They both let go, laughing."Naw," Plight said," we just play board games.
Derek Landy
What are you doing?""I'm, uh, acting normal.""No you're not. You're acting like someone pretending to be normal. Stop pretending and start acting, but don't act like you're not pretending, that'll make it worse.
Derek Landy
I've always been a monster,' Scapegrace told her, 'but now, finally, my physical for reflects my inner darkness.''You smell terrible.''That's the smell of evil.''It's like rancid meat and bad eggs.''Evil," Scapegrace insisted.
Derek Landy
I was going straight for Mantis, but then that bloody gas got in my eyes and, I don't know, some massive bloke reared up in front of me. I hit him, but I swear, it was like hiting a wall."Gracious nodded. "You hit a wall."Maybury blinked at him. "I what?""I saw it. You ran into a cloud of gas and stumbled around for a second until you reached a wall, and then you shrieked and punched it. It was very heroic.
Derek Landy
You're not used to early mornings, are you?"He shook his head. "Early mornings were invented by the system to keep the people occupied. But not me. I'm on to them. They're not gonna catch me napping. Metaphorically, like. Obviously, they can catch me physically napping like, four or five times a day, but, metaphorically, I am so far beyond their reach.
Derek Landy
I am what prevents the Accelerator from being a bomb.""Except you didn't," said Gracious. "Because you weren't around.""I got bored.""You're a machine.""Machines can become bored, too."Gracious looked suddenly concerned. "My toaster is bored?""Perhaps, " said the Engineer. "I do not know many toasters.
Derek Landy
The Engineer smiled (internally, for of course it had no mouth). It was feeling good. It was feeling optimistic. Moving at its current speed, it would arrive back in Ireland in plenty of time to shut everything down before a series of overloads and power loops inevitably led to a sequence of events which would, in turn, eventually lead to the probable destruction of the world. The Engineer wasn't worried.And then the truck hit it.
Derek Landy
What's this about slippers?" Stephanie's mom said, walking in."Dad's just saying he could never lead the resistance against a robot army because he wears slippers.""This is very true," her mum said."Then it's decided," Stephanie's father said. "When the robot army makes itself known, I will be one of the first traitors to sell out the human race.""Wow," said Stephanie."Now that's an about-turn," said her mum."It's the only way," said her dad. "I have to make sure my family survives. The two of you and that other one, the small one--""Alice.""That's her. You're all that matter to me. You're all I care about. I will betray the human race so that the robot army spares you. And then later, I will betray you so that the robot army spares me. It's a dangerous ploy, but someone has to be willing to take the big risks, and I'll be damned if I'm about to let anyone else gamble with my family's future.""You're so brave," Stephanie's mum said."I know," said her dad, and then quieter, "I know.
Derek Landy
Ending a novel is almost like putting a child to sleep – it can't be done abru
Colm Tóibín
I keep being told that my writing is getting better and better. - Now, at first I am thrilled by that, but then I think, Isn't everybody's? Do some authors grow cozy with their own style, and stay there?I think of writing fiction as an art form. As such, it's a constant exploration of new and developing ideas. If any of my books were much like my others, I don't think I'd even bother to write them.
Edward Fahey
I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me so much.
Oscar Wilde
I think it is the art of the glimpse. If the novel is like an intricate Renaissance painting, the short story is an impressionist painting. It should be an explosion of truth. Its strength lies in what it leaves out just as much as what it puts in, if not more. It is concerned with the total exclusion of meaninglessness. Life, on the other hand, is meaningless most of the time. The novel imitates life, where the short story is bony, and cannot wander. It is essential art.
William Trevor
There is a great deal to be said in favour of reading a novel backwards. The last page is as a rule the most interesting, and when one begins with the catastrophe or the dénouement one feels on pleasant terms of equality with the author. It is like going behind the scenes of a theatre. One is no longer taken in, and the hair-breadth escapes of the hero and the wild agonies of the heroine leave one absolutely unmoved. One knows the jealously guarded secret, and one can afford to smile at the quite unnecessary anxiety that the puppets of fiction always consider it their duty to display.
Oscar Wilde
For the only way one can speak of nothing is to speak of it as though it were something, just as the only way one can speak of God is to speak of him as though he were a man, which to be sure he was, in a sense, for a time, and as the only way one can speak of a man, even our anthropologists have realised that, is to speak of him as though he were a termite.
Samuel Beckett
...then much, then little, then nothing.
Samuel Beckett
Name, no, nothing is namable, tell, no, nothing can be told, what then, I don't know, I shouldn't have begun.
Samuel Beckett
...nothing ever as much as begun, nothing ever but nothing and never, nothing ever but lifeless words.
Samuel Beckett
But mostly not for nothing never quite for nothing even stillest night when air too still for even the lightest leaf to sound no not to sound to carry too still for even the lightest leaf to carry the brief way here and not die the sound not die on the brief way the wave not die away.
Samuel Beckett
I love to talk about nothing. It's the only thing I know anything about.
Oscar Wilde
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.
Samuel Beckett
No one likes sarcasm, Miss Cain. I’ve merely delayed my exit to promise you something. You took my straight razor, li’l darlin’. That I view as an unforgivable offense. So when the time comes, when you have served your purpose, I swear to you I’m gonna kill you for free.” And with that, Billy-Ray Sanguine disappeared into the ground. Then he popped his head back up. “Or at least half price.” And he was gone again.
Derek Landy
The possible is just the impossible that we've come to accept,
Stewart Stafford
If we are taken all together, we might muster some courage, but from the previous evidence it is likely that we will be taken separately.
Edna O'Brien