Quotes by Irish Authors - Page 5

There are no short cuts to Heaven only the ordinary way of ordinary things.
Vincent McNabb
Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.
James Joyce
The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs a lot less.
Brendan Behan
It does not matter what you do in the bedroom as long as you do not do it in the street and frighten the horses.
Patrick Campbell
Artificial manners vanish the moment the natural passions are touched.
Maria Edgeworth
Our hearts were drunk with a beauty our eyes could never see.
George W. Russell
A sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.
Oscar Wilde
Parentage is a very important profession but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interests of the Children.
George Bernard Shaw
The best brought-up children are those who have seen their parents as they are. Hypocrisy is not the parents' first duty.
George Bernard Shaw
He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
Jonathan Swift
Pain and pleasure like light and darkness succeed each other.
Laurence Sterne
There is a courageous wisdom there is also a false reptile prudence the result not of caution but of fear.
Edmund Burke
The whole art of life is knowing the right time to say things.
Maeve Binchy
Jealousy is no more than feeling alone against smiling enemies.
Elizabeth Bowen
The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.
George Bernard Shaw
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
To most of us the real life is the life we do not lead.
Oscar Wilde
When you don't have any money the problem is food. When you have money it's sex. When you have both it's health. If everything is simply jake then you're frightened of death.
J.P. Donleavy
Originality does not consist in saying what no one has ever said before but in saying exactly what you think yourself.
James Stephens
Our laws make law impossible our liberties destroy all freedom our property is organized robbery our morality an impudent hypocrisy our wisdom is administered by inexperienced or mal-experienced dupes our power wielded by cowards and weaklings and our honour false in all its points. I am an enemy of the existing order for good reasons.
George Bernard Shaw
Pessimist - one who when he has the choice of two evils chooses both.
Oscar Wilde
Times of stress and difficulty are seasons of opportunity when the seeds of progress are sown.
Thomas F. Woodlock
All empty souls tend to extreme opinion.
William Butler Yeats
I thought I'd begin by reading a poem by Shakespeare but then I thought Why should I? He never reads any of mine.
Spike Milligan
I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.
George Bernard Shaw
A day's work is a day's work neither more nor less and the man who does it needs a day's sustenance a night's repose and due leisure whether he be painter or ploughman.
George Bernard Shaw
The moment we pass out of our habits we lose all sense of permanency and routine.
George Moore
Habit is not mere subjugation it is a tender tie when one remembers habit it seems to have been happiness.
Elizabeth Bowen
Men talk of killing time while time quietly kills them.
Dion Boucicault
To become the spectator of one's own life is to escape the suffering of life.
Oscar Wilde
Success consists of getting up just one more time than you fall.
Oliver Goldsmith
Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.
Oscar Wilde
A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.
George Bernard Shaw
The cold neutrality of an impartial judge.
Edmund Burke
There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before.
Robert Lynd
Hell is full of musical amateurs.
George Bernard Shaw
The harp that once through Tara's halls The soul of music shed Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls As if that soul were fled.
George Moore
From Mozart I learnt to say important things in a conversational way.
George Bernard Shaw
As long as I have a want I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
George Bernard Shaw
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
The writers against religion whilst they oppose every system are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.
Edmund Burke
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
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
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