Quotes by Irish Authors - Page 4

The writers against religion whilst they oppose every system are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.
Edmund Burke
Relations are simply a tedious pack of people who haven't got the remotest knowledge of how to live nor the smallest instinct about when to die.
Oscar Wilde
With three or more people there is something bold in the air: direct things get said which would frighten two people alone and conscious of each inch of their nearness to one another. To be three is to be in public - you feel safe.
Elizabeth Bowen
If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton you may as well make it dance.
George Bernard Shaw
Genius is the gold in the mine talent is the miner that works and brings it out.
Lady Marguerite Blessington
The hours we pass with happy prospects in view are more pleasing than those crowned with fruition.
Oliver Goldsmith
For people who live on expectations to face up to their realization is something of an ordeal.
Elizabeth Bowen
When I am reading a book whether wise or silly it seems to me to be alive and talking to me.
Jonathan Swift
Who ever is adequate? We all create situations which others can't live up to then break our hearts at them because they don't.
Elizabeth Bowen
I know Sir John will go though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs.
Jonathan Swift
Only the shallow know themselves.
Oscar Wilde
We also serve who only punctuate.
Brian Moore
The Right Honourable gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests and to his imagination for his facts.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no fibs.
Oliver Goldsmith
Promise and pie-crust are made to be broken.
Jonathan Swift
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends upon the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw
A great devotee of the gospel of getting on.
George Bernard Shaw
Ambition can creep as well as soar.
Edmund Burke
While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
George Bernard Shaw
I know not whether laws be right Or whether laws be wrong All that we know who lie in gaol Is that the wall is strong And that each day is like a year A year whose days are long.
Oscar Wilde
But in his duty prompt at every call He watch'd and wept he pray'd and felt for all.
Oliver Goldsmith
At church with meek and unaffected grace His looks adorn'd the venerable place Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway And fools who came to scoff remain'd to pray.
Oliver Goldsmith
O God if in the day of battle I forget Thee do not Thou forget me.
William King
I always love to begin a journey on Sundays because I shall have the prayers of the church to preserve all that travel by land or by water.
Jonathan Swift
At church with meek and unaffected grace His looks adorn'd the venerable place Truth from his lips prevail'd with double sway And fools who came to scoff remain'd to pray.
Oliver Goldsmith
When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.
Oscar Wilde
What a friend we have in Jesus All our sins and griefs to bear! What a privilege to carry Everything to God in Prayer! Have we trials and temptations? Is there trouble anywhere? We should never be discouraged Take it to the Lord in prayer. Are we weak and heavy laden Cumbered with a load of care? Precious Savior still our refuge Take it to the Lord in prayer. O what peace we often forfeit O what needless pain we bear All because we do not carry Everything to God in prayer!
Joseph Scriven
Most people do not pray they only beg.
George Bernard Shaw
What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattery.
George Bernard Shaw
Tis an old maxim in the schools That flattery's the food of fools - Yet now and then your men of wit Will condescend to take a bit.
Jonathan Swift
There is no scandal like rags nor any crime so shameful as poverty.
George Farquhar
Modern poverty is not the poverty that was blest in the Sermon on the Mount.
George Bernard Shaw
A woman seldom writes her Mind but in her Postscript.
Richard Steele
People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.
Edmund Burke
Possession they say is eleven points of the law.
Jonathan Swift
Dangers by being despised grow great.
Edmund Burke
If you look at life one way there is always cause for alarm.
Elizabeth Bowen
Nothing is politically right which is morally wrong.
Daniel O'Connell
A statesman is an easy man He tells his lies by rote A journalist makes up his lies And takes you by the throat So stay at home and drink your beer And let the neighbours vote.
William Butler Yeats
Your representative owes you not his industry only but his judgement and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
Edmund Burke
A disposition to preserve and an ability to improve taken together would be my standard of a statesman.
Edmund Burke
He knows nothing he thinks he knows everything - that clearly points to a political career.
George Bernard Shaw
Probably the most distinctive characteristic of the successful politician is selective cowardice.
Richard Harris
A true gentlemen is one who is never unintentionally rude.
Oscar Wilde
The man recover'd of the bite The dog it was that died.
Oliver Goldsmith
Before verse can be human again it must learn to be brutal.
J. M. Synge
Of our conflicts with others we make rhetoric of our conflicts with ourselves we make poetry.
William Butler Yeats
Pity is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatesoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with the human sufferer.
James Joyce
A book or poem which has no pity in it had better not be written.
Oscar Wilde
The philosopher is Nature's pilot - and there you have our difference to be in hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.
George Bernard Shaw
Queen of arts and daughter of heaven.
Edmund Burke
The philosopher is Nature's pilot. And there you have our difference: to be in hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.
George Bernard Shaw
Philosophy has a fine saying for everything - for Death it has an entire set.
Laurence Sterne
Philosophy is a good horse in the stable but an errant jade on a journey.
Oliver Goldsmith
A man cannot dress without his ideas get clothed at the same time.
Laurence Sterne
A pessimist? A man who thinks everybody as nasty as himself and hates them for it.
George Bernard Shaw
It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible not the invisible.
Oscar Wilde
When something has been perfect there is a tendency to try hard to repeat it.
Edna O'Brien
The very pink of perfection.
Oliver Goldsmith
Ireland is a fatal disease fatal to Englishmen and doubly fatal to Irishmen.
George Moore