Quotes by Irish Authors - Page 28

The burden of this world is too great for one man to bear, and the world’s sorrow too heavy for one heart to suffer.
Oscar Wilde
Though the last glimpse of Erin with sorrow I see,Yet wherever thou art shall seem Erin to me;In exile thy bosom shall still be my home,And thine eyes make my climate wherever we roam.
Thomas Moore
Every bond is a bond to sorrow.
James Joyce
I jumped on Sinbad's bottle. Nothing happened. I didn't do it again. Sometimes when nothing happened it was really getting ready to happen
Roddy Doyle
Estragon: They're too bigVladimir: Perhaps you'll have socks some day
Samuel Beckett
I am almost dizzied by a sudden knowledge, as cold as snow down my spine; that I, too, will grow up one day like everyone else, and look back and miss the years gone by, and the things I could have done, should have done. And growing up is suddenly not something to be impatient for, not all jam and buns and doing as one pleases. It is precisely the opposite.
Paul Kearney
A dim antagonism gathered force within him and darkened his mind as a cloud against her disloyalty: and when it passed, cloudlike, leaving his mind serene and dutiful towards her again, he was made aware dimly and without regret of a first noiseless sundering of their lives.
James Joyce
It was a sign of growing up, when the dark made no more difference to you than the day.
Roddy Doyle
Everyone else we knew growing up is the same: image of their parents, no matter how loud they told themselves they'd be different
Tana French
You can’t take credit for what you do when your back is against the wall.
Tana French
Whatever may happen, it must be of new hope or of new courage to me!
Bram Stoker
I never asked to be a king: it was pushed on me. So if you are going to say 'Son of St Louis: gird on the sword of your ancestors, and lead us to victory' you may spare your breath to cool your porridge; for I cannot do it. I am not built that way; and there is an end of it.
George Bernard Shaw
I don't think he likes girls", I said. "Or boys. Look at the horror on his face. He doesn't look like a people person.
Sarah Rees Brennan
Lovely Arra Sails,nectar to all males,how I'd like to spear you like a whaler spears a whale!
Darren Shan
You are mine, you shall be mine, you and I are one for ever.
J. Sheridan Le Fanu
The blood is the life!
Bram Stoker
She used to place her pretty arms about my neck, draw me to her, and laying her cheek to mine, murmur with her lips near my ear, “Dearest, your little heart is wounded; think me not cruel because I obey the irresistible law of my strength and weakness; if your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours. In the rapture of my enormous humiliation I live in your warm life, and you shall die—die, sweetly die—into mine. I cannot help it; as I draw near to you, you, in your turn, will draw near to others, and learn the rapture of that cruelty, which yet is love; so, for a while, seek to know no more of me and mine, but trust me with all your loving spirit.”And when she had spoken such a rhapsody, she would press me more closely in her trembling embrace, and her lips in soft kisses gently glow upon my cheek.
J. Sheridan Le Fanu
I may have had moments of regret in my life, but you know, they wouldn't add up to an hour.
Emma Donoghue
Nor did he think of Celia any more, though he could sometimes remember having dreamt of her. If only he had been able to think of her, he would not have needed to dream of her.
Samuel Beckett
I don’t regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does. There was no pleasure I did not experience.
Oscar Wilde
And it was the din of all these hollow-sounding voices that made him halt irresolutely in the pursuit of phantoms. He gave them ear only for a time but he was happy only when he was far from them, beyond their call, alone or in the company of phantasmal comrades.
James Joyce
In an instant all will vanish and we'll be alone once more, in the midst of nothingness.
Samuel Beckett
There was a lot to be said for a man’s capacity to be comfortable while alone.
John Connolly
We must have taken a wrong turn turning somewhere.""Where, Purgatory?" said Dozy. "We're in Hell.
John Connolly
That was their way, their heathenish hope; deep in their hearts they remembered hell.
Seamus Heaney
Written over the gate here are the words 'Leave every hope behind, ye who enter.' Only think what a relief that is! For what is hope? A form of moral responsibility. Here there is no hope, and consequently no duty, no work, nothing to be gained by praying, nothing to be lost by doing what you like. Hell, in short is a place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself.
George Bernard Shaw
In contrast, the a/theistic approach can be seen as a form of disbelieving what one believes, or rather, believing in God while remaining dubious concerning what one believes about God (a distinction that fundamentalism is unable to maintain).
Peter Rollins
Religion to me almost like when God leaves – and people devise a set of rules to fill in the space.
Bono
My master then, assuming he is solitary, in my image, wishes me well, poor devil, wishes my good, and if he does not seem to do very much in order not to be disappointed it is because there is not very much to be done or, better still, because there is nothing to be done, otherwise he would have done it, my great and good master, that must be it, long ago, poor devil. Another supposition, he has taken the necessary steps, his will is done as far as I am concerned (for he may have other protégés) and all is well with me without my knowing it. Cases one and two. I’ll consider the former first, if I can. Then I’ll admire the latter, if my eyes are still open.
Samuel Beckett
I have been so long masterthat I would be master still, or at least that none othershould be master of me.
Bram Stoker
Our actions are like ships which we may watch set out to sea, and not know when or with what cargo they will return to port.
Iris Murdoch
A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood.
Edmund Burke
You are responsible for your own life and what happens in it, so are the other people.
Cecelia Ahern
No woman will ever take care of my children but me, she said. I will not allow it, do you understand?And after I am gone Madge Toxley, if you try to make them yours, then you will live to regret it.
John Boyne
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
You are not there, Father,” I cried. “I wake up at Gaudlin Hall, I spend most of my day there, I sleep there at night. And throughout it all there is but one thought running through my mind.”“And that is?”“This house is haunted.
John Boyne
The true nature of a democracy is its ability to say yes when even the powerful say no
Colum McCann
But when the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people. If any of them should happen to propose a scheme of liberty, soberly limited, and defined with proper qualifications, he will be immediately outbid by his competitors, who will produce something more splendidly popular. Suspicions will be raised of his fidelity to his cause. Moderation will be stigmatized as the virtue of cowards; and compromise as the prudence of traitors; until, in hopes of preserving the credit which may enable him to temper, and moderate, on some occasions, the popular leader is obliged to become active in propagating doctrines, and establishing powers, that will afterwards defeat any sober purpose at which he ultimately might have aimed.
Edmund Burke
Tribal Chief 1: The will of the people is what is best. That is what democracy meansTribal Chief 2: But if the people don’t know what they are talking about, how can that be the best?
Leonard Wibberley
Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
George Bernard Shaw
Narrative is an open-ended invitation to ethical and poetical responsiveness. Storytelling invites us to become not just agents of our own lives, but narrators and readers as well. It shows us that the untold life is not worth living. There will always be someone there to say, 'tell me a story', and someone there to respond. Were this not so, we would no longer be fully human.
Richard Kearney
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
If we all got fed up at the same time, which could happen coming on evening, we would all sit down and Mick would sign a song. We learned many songs while setting spuds and many a story was told, imaginary or otherwise. We understood well the story of the Gobán Saor, an old Irish legend. The Gobán Saor ruled a large kingdom which he wanted to leave to the cleverest of his three sons. One day, he took his eldest son on a long journey and after some time walking he said: "Son, shorten the road for me."The son was totally at a loss as to how to help his father, so they returned home. The following day the Gobán Saor took his second son, and again the same thing happened. On the third day he took his youngest son and after they had travelled some distance he said once more: "Son, shorten the road for me."The youngest son immediately began to tell his father a story that was long and interesting, and they became so engrossed in the tale that they never noticed the length of the journey. In our lives, Mick was the Gobán Saor's youngest son.
Alice Taylor
I don't judge a scene or a line of dialog by whether or not it advances the plot, for example. Imagine an edit of Tarantino's Pulp Fiction wherein only dialog that advances the plot was allowed to remain. I don't obsess over the balance of conflict and interaction. I don't generally fret over the possibility that something I do may cause some reader to experience a "disconnect" (what an odious metaphor). I don't think in dramatic arcs. I don't spend a lot of time wondering if the plot is getting lost in description and conversation. To me, this all seems like a wealth of tedious confusion being introduced into an act that ought to be instinctive, natural, intuitive. I want to say, stop thinking about all that stuff and just write the story you have to tell. Let the story show you how it needs you to write it. I don't try to imagine how the reader will react to X or if maybe A, B, and C should have happened by page R. It's not that I don't want the story to be read. I desire readers as much as anyone. But I desire readers who want to read what I'm writing, not readers who approach fiction with so many expectations that they're constantly second-guessing and critiquing the author's every move, book in one hand, some workshop checklist in the other, and a stopwatch on the desk before them. If writing or reading like this seems to work for you, fine. I mean, I've always said that when you find something that works, stick with it. But, for me, it seems as though such an anal approach to creating any art would bleed from it any spark of enjoyment on the part of the artist (not to mention the audience). It also feels like an attempt to side-step the nasty issue of talent, as if we can all write equally well if we only follow the rules, because, you know, good writing is really 99% craft, not inexplicable, inconvenient, unquantifiable talent.
Caitlín R. Kiernan
Things in life have no real beginning, though our stories about them always do.
Colum McCann
Life is a series of moments and moments are always changing, just like thoughts, negative and positive.
Cecelia Ahern
It has always struck me that one of the readiest ways of estimating a country's regard for law is to notice what arms the officers of the law are carrying: in England it is little batons, in France swords, in many countries revolvers, and in Russia the police used to have artillery.
Lord Dunsany
The proposition is peace. Not peace through the medium of war; not peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations; not peace to arise out of universal discord, fomented from principle, in all parts of the empire; not peace to depend on the juridical determination of perplexing questions, or the precise marking the shadowy boundaries of a complex government. It is simple peace, sought in its natural course and in its ordinary haunts. It is peace sought in the spirit of peace, and laid in principles purely pacific.
Edmund Burke
The law doesn't require truth, only the appearance of it. Most cases simply rest on a version of it that's acceptable to both sides. You want to know the only truth is? Everybody lies.--Elwin Stark
John Connolly
Judges... are picked out from the most dextrous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy, and having been biased all their lives against truth or equity, are under such a fatal necessity of favoring fraud, perjury and oppression, that I have known several of them to refuse a large bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure the faculty by doing any thing unbecoming their nature in office.
Jonathan Swift
I once knew a fellow who committed robbery with violence, and he was sentenced to a long prison stretch and 12 strokes of the cat. He'd been injured during the robbery, so they put him in hospital to make him better so that they could make him worse. During the administration of the cat, he fainted after six strokes, and the doctor put him in hospital again. And he got very friendly with the nurses and the doctors, and after a while they got him well enough to go back and take the next six strokes. I saw him afterward and I said: "Oh, Jesus—that bloody law, that bloody judge!" But he said: "I don't want the fellow who made the law, and I don't want the fellow who passed the sentence. All I want is the fellow who held the bloody whip.
Peter O'Toole
Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
Jonathan Swift
The creation of the world did not take place once and for all time, but takes place every day.
Samuel Beckett
They were in a position of total ignorance and people in that position often died without being enlightened.
Eoin Colfer
Whatever it may bring, I will live by my own policies, I will sleep with a clear conscience, I will sleep in peace.
Sinead O'Connor
The only dreams that matter are the ones you have when you're awake.
John O'Callaghan
Here's lumbos. Where misties swaddlum, where misches lodge none, where mystries pour kind on, O sleepy! So be yet!
James Joyce
When I act tough they listen politely till the spasm passes. They know.
Frank McCourt
There's nothing sillier in the world than a teacher telling you don't do it after you already did it.
Frank McCourt
First day of your teaching you are to stand at your classroom door and let your students know how happy you are to see them. Stand, I say. Any playwright will tell you that when the actor sits down the play sits down. The best move of all is to establish yourself as a presence and to do it outside in the hallway. Outside, I say. That’s your territory and when you’re out there you’ll be seen as a strong teacher, fearless, ready to face the swarm. That’s what a class is, a swarm. And you’re a warrior teacher. It’s something people don’t think about. Your territory is like your aura, it goes with you everywhere, in the hallways, on the stairs and, assuredly, in the classroom.
Frank McCourt