Quotes by Irish Authors - Page 57

Well, in the first place girls never marry the men they flirt with. Girls don't think it right.
Oscar Wilde
To be popular one must be a mediocrity.""Not with Women," said the duchess, shaking her head; "and women rule the world. I assure you we can't bear mediocrities. We women, as someone says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes, if you ever love at all.""It seems to me that we never do anything else," murmered Dorian.
Oscar Wilde
So I'm back again to the eternal question, the one that has plagued me all my life: How Do Other People Do It? How come they were given life's rule book and I missed out? Where was I when God was dispensing capability and cop on? Looking at shoes, probably.
Marian Keyes
There was something factitious and brittle and thereby utterly feminine about her charm which made me want to crush her, even to crunch her. She had a slight cast in one eye which gives her gaze a strange concentrated intensity. Her eyes sparkle, almost as if they were actually emitting sparks. She is electric. And she could run faster in very high-heeled shoes than any girl I ever met.
Iris Murdoch
Plain women are always jealous of their husbands. Beautiful women never are. They are always so occupied with being jealous of other women's husbands.
Oscar Wilde
I could not resist the temptation of mystifying him a bit, I suppose it is some taste of the original apple that remains still in our mouths.
Bram Stoker
She respected her husband in the same way as she respected the General Post Office, as something large, secure and fixed: and though she knew the small number of his talents she appreciated his abstract value as a male.
James Joyce
We were still at the age when girls are years older than guy, and the guys grow up by doing their best when the girls need them to.
Tana French
Be the kind of woman who, when your feet hit the floor each morning, the devil says "Oh, no! She's up.
Joanne Clancy
That is the injustice of a woman's lot. A woman has to bring up her children; and that means to restrain them, to deny them things they want, to set them tasks, to punish them when they do wrong, to do all the unpleasant things. And then the father, who has nothing to do but pet them and spoil them, comes in when all her work is done and stealstheir affection from her.
George Bernard Shaw
Indeed, no woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.
Oscar Wilde
Women, as some witty Frenchman once put it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces and always prevent us from carrying them out.
Oscar Wilde
I am sick of women who love one. Women who hate one are much more interesting.
Oscar Wilde
Women defend themselves by attacking, just as they attack by sudden and strange surrenders.
Oscar Wilde
I think being a woman is like being Irish... Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the time.
Iris Murdoch
As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her daughter, she is perfectly satisfied
Oscar Wilde
A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.
Oscar Wilde
The only way to ensure democracy functions correctly is to question its governance constantly. Fail to do so and you may awake to find yourself living in a police state.
Stewart Stafford
Policemen always call me a stupid bitch, and I deny that I'm stupid.
Bernadette Devlin McAliskey
Great leaders lead by example, not by making an example of others.
Stewart Stafford
The United Staes had never in its history intervened to stop genocide and had in fact rarely even made a point of condemning it as it occurred,
Samantha Power
Republicans know well that a change of rhetorical pace is necessary. But efforts by their leaders to damp down the bellicosity of newly elected Tea Party types is running into the fact that the Tea Partiers have only the high volume setting on their amplifiers, just like Palin. They're like a couple having a fight at a funeral; politely sotto voce, then suddenly bursting out fortissimo with their plaints and accusations.
Alexander Cockburn
As God can protect his people under the greatest despotism, so the utmost civil liberty is no safety to them without the immediate protection of his Almighty arm. I fear that Christians in this country have too great a confidence in political institutions . . . [rather] than of the government of God.
Alexander Carson
He likewise directed, “that every senator in the great council of a nation, after he had delivered his opinion, and argued in the defence of it, should be obliged to give his vote directly contrary; because if that were done, the result would infallibly terminate in the good of the public.
Jonathan Swift
Humans elect leaders on the basis of the promises they make. We [vampires] try to elect ours based solely on the strength of their character.
Darren Shan
Regulation of sexual behavioris the preferred route to wider socialcontrol.
Alexander Cockburn
The British could leave and half India wouldn't notice us leaving just as they didn't notice us arriving. All our reforms of administration might be reforms on the moon for all it has to do with them..
J.G. Farrell
It was as dark as the inside of a cabinet minister.
Joyce Cary
If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first.
Oscar Wilde
And he gave it for his opinion, "that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.
Jonathan Swift
Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity, and fashion will drive them to acquire any custom.
George Bernard Shaw
People are talking about immigration, emigration and the rest of the fucking thing. It's all fucking crap. We're all human beings, we're all mammals, we're all rocks, plants, rivers. Fucking borders are just such a pain in the fucking arse.
Shane MacGowan
It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.
Jonathan Swift
Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it....
George Bernard Shaw
She [88yo Mrs Fitzgerald] crossed herself and patted my arm. "And you're after coming all the way from England to find out who done it? Aren't you great? God bless you, young fella." "The old heretic," I said, when we got outside. Mrs. Fitzgerald had cheered up my day immensely. "I hope I have that much zip when I'm eighty-eight
Tana French
I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use -- silence, exile, and cunning.
James Joyce
So what are you thinking?" I asked. I meant about the case, obviously, but Cassie was in a giddy mood--she generates more energy than most people, and she'd been sitting indoors most of the day. "Will you listen to him? A woman asking a guy what he's thinking is the ultimate crime, she's clingy and needy and he runs a mile, but when it's the other--" "Behave yourself," I said, pulling her hood over her face. "Help! I'm being oppressed!" she yelled through it. "Call the Equality Commission." The stroller girl gave us a sour look. "You're overexcited," I told Cassie. "Calm down or I'll take you home with no ice cream.
Tana French
Lady Bracknell, I hate to seem inquisitive, but would you kindly inform me who I am?
Oscar Wilde
Honestly, if you're looking for love and you're not too choosy, hang around a hardware store fingering screws.
Marian Keyes
Busty’ Roberts had joined the Royal Artillery in 1914 and since then had steadily risen to the rank of Gunner. Now the crunch: someone with a perverted sense of humour made him a Lance Bombardier. Roberts went insane with power. The war now consisted of two people, him and Hitler.
Spike Milligan
Some people live a nothing life: the most important thing they ever do is die. Thank God for eccentrics! Take Gunner Octavian Neat. He would suddenly appear naked in a barrack room and say, “Does anybody know a good tailor?”, or “Gentlemen – I think there’s a thief in the battery.” He was the bane of the Regiment.
Spike Milligan
...Roberts had joined the Royal Artillery in 1914 and since then had steadily risen to the rank of Gunner. Now the crunch: someone with a perverted sense of humour made him a Lance Bombardier. Roberts went insane with power. The war now consisted of two people, him and Hitler.
Spike Milligan
Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast
Oscar Wilde
We are off! And do we know it, not just because the world is yelling "Lift-off" in our ears, but because the seats of our pants tell us so! Trust your instruments, not your body, the modern pilot is always told, but this beast is best felt. Shake, rattle and roll!
Michael Collins
... I've a thirst on me I wouldn't sell for half a crown.- Give it a name, citizen, says Joe.- Wine of the country, says he.- What's yours? says Joe.- Ditto MacAnaspey, says I.- Three pints, Terry, says Joe. And how's the old heart, citizen? says he.
James Joyce
People often say to me: Oy! Get out of my garden.
Michael Redmond
Everybody means by an open mind, a mind which contains their prejudices but not somebody else's.
John Oulton Wisdom
With a roof over his head he had ceased to work, living off his [war] pension and his wits, both hopelessly inadequate.
Spike Milligan
In the yard of the inn, Daffy Cadwaladyr introduced himself. "Short for Davyd," he said pleasantly.The Londoner looked as if she'd never heard a sillier name in her life.
Emma Donoghue
I love Prada. Not so much the clothes, which are for malnourished thirteen-year-olds, but I covet, with covety covetousness, the shoes and handbags. Like, I LOVE them. If I was given a choice between world peace and a Prada handbag, I'd dither. (I'm not proud of this, I'm only saying.)
Marian Keyes
Humanity, let us say, is like people packed in an automobile which is traveling downhill without lights at terrific speed and driven by a four-year-old child. The signposts along the way are all marked 'Progress.
Lord Dunsany
You will do well to take advantage of Madame's short residence to get up your French a little... You will be glad of this, my dear, when you have reached France, where you will find they speak nothing else.
J. Sheridan Le Fanu
In my time first cousins did not meet like strangers. But we are learning modesty from the Americans, and old English ways are too gross for us.
J. Sheridan Le Fanu
The clock in the church tower said 4.32, as it had done for three hundred years. It was right once a day and that was better than no clock at all.
Spike Milligan
R.I.P.Tom Conlon O'Rourke.Not Dead, just Sleeping.
Spike Milligan
Oh, I hate the cheap severity of abstract ethics!
Oscar Wilde
Please just admit it," said Valkyrie. "You're going to miss me, aren't you?" "Obviously," said Skulduggery. "Thank you." "like a drowning man misses the land." "Aw w w..." "Like a hesitant man misses the chance." "Yeah..." "Like an oblivious man misses the point." "I have a feeling you're mocking me somehow, but I can't put my finger on how.
Derek Landy
I make my way back whistling. Gerry nods towards Mrs Brady who is standing beside the trolleys.Morning, Mrs Brady, I say cheerfully.I push her provisions out to the car.Things are something terrible, she says. You can't trust anybody.No.It's come to a sorry pass.It has.There's hormones in the beef and tranquillizers in the bacon. There's men with breasts and women with mickeys. All from eating meat.Now.I steer a path between a crowd of people while she keeps step alongside.Can you believe it - they're feeding the pigs Valium. If you boil a bit of bacon you have to lie down afterwards. Dear oh dear.Yes, I nod.The thought of food makes me ill.The pigs are getting depressed in those sheds. If they get depressed they lose weight. So they tranquillize them. Where will it end?I don't know, Mrs Brady, I say. I begin filling the boot. That's why I started buying lamb. Then along came Chernobyl. Now you can't even have lamb stew or you'll light up at night! I swear. And when they've left you with nothing safe to eat, next thing they come along and tell you you can't live in your own house.I haven't heard of that one, Mrs Brady.Listen to me. She took my elbow. It could all happen that you're in your own house and the next thing is there's radiation bubbling under the floorboards.What?It comes right at you through the foundations. Watch the yogurts. Did you hear of th
Dermot Healy
The craft's occupants clutched their armrests, and more than one of them closed their eyes. But not Artemis. He couldn't. There was something morbidly fascinating about flying into an uncharted tunnel at a reckless speed with only a kleptomaniac dwarf's word for what lay at the other end.
Eoin Colfer
After Puckoon I swore I'd never write another book. This is it
Spike Milligan