Quotes by Irish Authors - Page 3

I am not afraid of the pen or the scaffold or the sword. I will tell the truth whenever I please.
Mother Jones
The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they can't find them make them.
George Bernard Shaw
Mountains appear more lofty the nearer they are approached but great men resemble them not in this particular.
Lady Marguerite Blessington
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
It is in games that many men discover their paradise.
Robert Lynd
It's important to be heroic ambitious productive efficient creative and progressive but these qualities don't necessarily nurture the soul. The soul has different concerns of equal value: downtime for reflection conversation and reverie beauty that is captivating and pleasuring relatedness to the environs and to people and any animal's rhythm of rest and activity.
Thomas Moore
Soul appears when we make room for it.
Thomas Moore
He rose without a friend and sat down without an enemy.
Henry Grattan
If the announcer can produce the impression that he is a gentleman he may pronounce as he pleases.
George Bernard Shaw
Unhurt people are not much good in the world.
Enid Starkie
A song will outlive all sermons in the memory.
Henry Giles
A soldier is an anachronism of which we must get rid.
George Bernard Shaw
I respect kindness in human beings first of all and kindness to animals. I don't respect the law I have a total irreverance for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer the beer stronger the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.
Brendan Behan
To get into the best society nowadays one has either to feed people amuse people or shock people.
Oscar Wilde
Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern one is apt to grow old-fashioned quite suddenly.
Oscar Wilde
The public has a taste for supping with the great.
Ulick O'Connor
No place in England where everyone can go is considered respectable.
George Moore
Englishmen never will be slaves they are free to do whatever the Government and public opinion allow them to do.
George Bernard Shaw
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
Oscar Wilde
Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple and the simple thing is the right thing.
Oscar Wilde
Be silent and safe - silence never betrays you.
John Boyle O'Reilly
Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.
George Bernard Shaw
I believe in the discipline of silence and could talk for hours about it.
George Bernard Shaw
What shadows we are what shadows we pursue!
Edmund Burke
We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us ashamed of ourselves of our relatives of our incomes of our accents of our opinion of our experience just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.
George Bernard Shaw
Circumstances are the rulers of the weak they are but the instruments of the wise.
Samuel Lover
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. The people who get on in this world are they who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they can't find them make them.
George Bernard Shaw
When I saw something that needed doing I did it.
Nellie Cashman
It is better to be tied to any thorny bush than to be with a cross man.
Augusta Gregory
Experience isn't interesting till it begins to repeat itself-in fact till it does that it hardly is experience.
Elizabeth Bowen
Self-control is the quality that distinguishes the fittest to survive.
George Bernard Shaw
Borrowed thoughts like borrowed money only show the poverty of the borrower.
Lady Marguerite Blessington
He who seeks for applause only from without has all his happiness in another's keeping.
Oliver Goldsmith
My great mistake the fault for which I can't forgive myself is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality.
Oscar Wilde
To be on the alert is to live to be lulled into security is to die.
Oscar Wilde
Be secret and exult Because of all things known That is most difficult.
William Butler Yeats
It is very seldom that the same man knows much of science and about the things that were known before science came.
Lord Dunsany
Example is the school of mankind and they will learn at no other.
Edmund Burke
All science is either Physics or stamp-collecting.
Lord Kelvin
We are all born mad. Some remain so.
Samuel Beckett
Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.
George Bernard Shaw
All men that are ruined are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.
Edmund Burke
What some invent the rest enlarge.
Jonathan Swift
People seldom improve when they have no other model but themselves to copy.
Oliver Goldsmith
To gain that which is worth having it may be necessary to lose everything else.
Bernadette Devlin
The only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.
Oscar Wilde
Brutes find out where their talents lie a bear will not attempt to fly.
Jonathan Swift
If you go to heaven without being naturally qualified for it you will not enjoy it there.
George Bernard Shaw
Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
Jonathan Swift
It is a dangerous thing to reform anyone.
Oscar Wilde
Reformers have the idea that change can be achieved by brute sanity.
George Bernard Shaw
It is not the prisoners who need reformation it is the prisons.
Oscar Wilde
By gnawing through a dyke even a rat may drown a nation.
Edmund Burke
A nation without the means of reform is without the means of survival.
Edmund Burke
All reformers are bachelors.
George Moore
Whatever little we have gained we have gained by agitation while we have uniformly lost by moderation.
Daniel O'Connell
Christianity might be a good thing if anyone ever tried it.
George Bernard Shaw
Religion converts despair which destroys into resignation which submits.
Lady Blessington
There's no reason to bring religion into it. I think we ought to have as great a regard for religion as we can so as to keep it out of as many things as possible.
Seán O'Casey
Religion is a great force - the only real motive force in the world but you must get at a man through his own religion not through yours.
George Bernard Shaw