Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards, I take the air there willingly, perhaps more willingly than elsewhere, when take the air I must. (Irish quotes and aphorisms)
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)
Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as in books it is generally the worst sort of reading.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)
I can resist everything except temptation.
Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900 Irish poet and playwright)
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900 Irish poet and playwright)
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900 Irish poet and playwright)
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
He who can does. He who cannot, teaches.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900 Irish poet and playwright)
Every man desires to live long; but no man would be old.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)
But you think that it is time for me to have done with the world, and so I would if I could get into a better before I was called into the best, and not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)
Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)
A woman is a branchy tree and man a singing wind; and from her branches carelessly he takes what he can find.
James Stephens (1882-1950, Irish poet, author)
Crimes, like virtues, are their own rewards.
George Farquhar (c.1677-1707, Irish playwright)
Crime generally punishes itself.
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774, Anglo-Irish author, poet, playwright)
The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
It is a woman’s business to get married as soon as possible, and a man’s to keep unmarried as long as he can.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
‘Tis safest in matrimony to begin with a little aversion.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816, Anglo-Irish dramatist)
Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
Reality can destroy the dream; why shouldn’t the dream destroy reality?
George Moore (1852-1933, Irish writer)
A man travels the world in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.
George Moore (1852-1933, Irish writer)
We are the men of intrinsic value, who can strike our fortunes out of ourselves, whose worth is independent of accidents in life, or revolutions in government: we have heads to get money, and hearts to spend it.
George Farquhar (c.1677-1707, Irish playwright)
What did that mean, to kiss? You put your face up like that to say goodnight and then his mother put her face down. That was to kiss. His mother put her lips on his cheek; her lips were soft and they wetted his cheek; and they made a tiny little noise: kiss. Why did people do that with their two faces?
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)
I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)
Logic, like whiskey, loses its beneficial effect when taken in too large quantities.
Lord Dunsany (1879-1957, Irish playwright, novelist, poet)
The present is the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)
Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.
James Stephens (1882-1950, Irish poet, author)
Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by posterity because he was the last to discover America.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)
Research is usually a policeman stopping a novel from progressing.
Brian Moore (1921-, Irish novelist)
You forget that the kingdom of heaven suffers violence: and the kingdom of heaven is like a woman.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)
What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)
The difference between weakness and wickedness is much less than people suppose; and the consequences are nearly always the same.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (1789-1849, Irish writer and socialite)
It is the last rose of summer, left blooming alone; all her lovely companions are faded and gone.
Thomas Moore (1779-1852, Irish poet)
Probably nothing in the world arouses more false hopes than the first four hours of a diet.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)
Ridicule has always been the enemy of enthusiasm, and the only worthy opponent to ridicule is success.
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774, Anglo-Irish author, poet, playwright)
I believe they talked of me, for they laughed consumedly.
George Farquhar (c.1677-1707, Irish playwright)
There can be a fundamental gulf of gracelessness in a human heart which neither our love nor our courage can bridge.
Patrick Campbell (1913-1980, Irish humorist)
I would walk from here to Drogheda and back to see the man who is blockhead enough to expect anything except injustice from an English Parliament.
Daniel O’Connell (1775-1847, Irish national leader)
The silent majority distrusts people who believe in causes.
Brian Moore (1921-, Irish novelist)
Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace the day’s disasters in his morning face.
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774, Anglo-Irish author, poet, playwright)
He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
We love the precepts for the teacher’s sake.
George Farquhar (c.1677-1707, Irish playwright)
If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.
An elderly Irish woman
Mysticism has been in the past and probably ever will be one of the great powers of the world and it is bad scholarship to pretend the contrary. You may argue against it but you should no more treat it with disrespect than a perfectly cultivated writer would treat (say) the Catholic Church or the Church of Luther no matter how much he disliked them.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright)
Money is the sinews of love, as of war.
George Farquhar (c.1677-1707, Irish playwright)
When I heard the word “stream” uttered with such a revolting primness, what I think of is urine and not the contemporary novel. And besides, it isn’t new, it is far from the dernier cri. Shakespeare used it continually, much too much in my opinion, and there’s Tristam Shandy, not to mention the Agamemnon.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)
The years like great black oxen tread the world, and God the herdsman treads them on behind, and I am broken by their passing feet.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)
The world’s made up of individuals who don’t want to be heroes.
Brian Moore (1921-, Irish novelist)
Everybody sets out to do something, and everybody does something, but no one does what he sets out to do.
George Moore (1852-1933, Irish writer)
How can what an Englishman believes be hearsay? It is a contradiction in terms.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
The difficulty in life is the choice.
George Moore (1852-1933, Irish writer)
I carry from my mother’s womb a fanatic’s heart.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright)
Remorse: beholding heaven and feeling hell.
George Moore (1852-1933, Irish writer)
Let no man write my epitaph; for as no man who knows my motives dare now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them rest in obscurity and peace! Let my memory be left in oblivion, my tomb remain uninscribed, until other times and other men can do justice to my character.
Robert Emmet (1778-1803 Irish rebel)
I have believed the best of every man. And find that to believe is enough to make a bad man show his best, or even a good man swing his lantern higher.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright)
You see things and say “Why?” but I dream of things that never were and say “Why not?”
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)
While you have a thing it can be taken from you… but when you give it, you have given it. No robber can take it from you. It is yours then for ever when you have given it. It will be yours always. That is to give.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)
Malice is only another name for mediocrity.
Patrick Kavanagh (1905-1967, Irish poet, author)
When you are old and gray and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book and slowly read, and dream of the soft look your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)
A sweeping statement is the only statement worth listening to. The critic without faith gives balanced opinions, usually about second-rate writers.
Patrick Kavanagh (1905-1967, Irish poet, author)
I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it — yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.
Orson Welles (1915-1985, American film maker)
Honor sinks where commerce long prevails.
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774, Anglo-Irish author, poet, playwright)
Unequal combinations are always disadvantageous to the weaker side.
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774, Anglo-Irish author, poet, playwright)
There are in every generation those who shrink from the ultimate sacrifice, but there are in every generation those who make it with joy and laughter and these are the salt of the generations.
Patrick Henry Pearse (1879-1916, Irish nationalist leader)
Our civilization, bequeathed to us by fierce adventurers, eaters of meat and hunters, is so full of hurry and combat, so busy about many things which perhaps are of no importance, that it cannot but see something feeble in a civilization which smiles as it refuses to make the battlefield the test of excellence.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)
Any relations in a social order will endure, if there is infused into them some of that spirit of human sympathy which qualifies life for immortality.
George W. Russell (1867-1935, Irish poet, essayist, artist)
Autumn arrives in early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day.
Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973, Anglo-Irish novelist)
In the middle classes the gifted son of a family is always the poorest — usually a writer or artist with no sense for speculation — and in a family of peasants, where the average comfort is just over penury, the gifted son sinks also, and is soon a tramp on the roadside.
J. M. Synge (1871-1909, Irish poet, dramatist)
I would walk from here to Drogheda and back to see the man who is blockhead enough to expect anything except injustice from an English Parliament.
Daniel O’Connell (1775-1847, Irish national leader)
The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)
People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)
The organized charity, scrimped and iced, in the name of a cautious, statistical Christ.
John Boyle O’Reilly (1844-1890, Irish author)
We love the precepts for the teacher’s sake.
George Farquhar (c.1677-1707, Irish playwright)
Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace the day’s disasters in his morning face.
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774, Anglo-Irish author, poet, playwright)
Taking something from one man and making it worse is plagiarism.
George Moore (1852-1933, Irish writer)
Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors on national taste.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)
The years like great black oxen tread the world, and God the herdsman treads them on behind, and I am broken by their passing feet.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)
The worlds a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.
Sean O’Casey (1884-1964, Irish dramatist)
An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)
Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)
The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)
Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, great as each may be, their highest comfort given to the sorrowful is a cordial introduction into another’s woe. Sorrow’s the great community in which all men born of woman are members at one time or another.
Sean O’Casey (1884-1964, Irish dramatist)
When one has reached 81… one likes to sit back and let the world turn by itself, without trying to push it.
Sean O’Casey (1884-1964, Irish dramatist)
I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering, jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal. The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)
People with a culture of poverty suffer much less from repression than we of the middle class suffer and indeed, if I may make the suggestion with due qualification, they often have a hell of a lot more fun than we have.
Brian Friel (1929-, Irish playwright, author)
Some men see things as they are and say, “Why?” I of dream things that never were, and say, “Why not?”
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
Man watches his history on the screen with apathy and an occasional passing flicker of horror or indignation.
Conor Cruise O’Brien (1917-, Irish historian, critic, and statesman)
All things are inconstant except the faith in the soul, which changes all things and fills their inconstancy with light, but though I seem to be driven out of my country as a misbeliever I have found no man yet with a faith like mine.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)
My vocation is more in composition really than anything else — building up harmonies using the guitar, orchestrating the guitar like an army, a guitar army.
Jimmy Page (1944-, Irish musician, guitarist)
No place in England where everyone can go, is considered respectable.
George Moore (1852-1933, Irish writer)
The flame from the angel’s sword in the garden of Eden has been catalyzed into the atom bomb; God’s thunderbolt became blunted, so man’s thunderbolt has become the steel star of destruction.
Sean O’Casey (1884-1964, Irish dramatist)
Leisure may be defined as free activity, labor as compulsory activity. Leisure does what it likes, labor does what it must, the compulsion being that of Nature, which in these latitudes leaves men no choice between labor and starvation.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
It is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am of the opinion of the ancient Jewish book which says “there is no wisdom without leisure.”
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)
Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. When may it suffice?
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)
The wide wonder of Broadway is disconsolate in the daytime; but gaudily glorious at night, with a milling crowd filling sidewalk and roadway, silent, going up, going down, between upstanding banks of brilliant lights, each building braided and embossed with glowing, many-colored bulbs of man-rayed luminance. A glowing valley of the shadow of life. The strolling crowd went slowly by through the kinematically divine thoroughfare of New York.
Sean O’Casey (1884-1964, Irish dramatist)
I’m a good scholar when it comes to reading but a blotting kind of writer when you give me a pen.
J. M. Synge (1871-1909, Irish poet, dramatist)
You gave me the key of your heart, my love; then why did you make me knock? Oh that was yesterday, saints above! And last night – I changed the lock!
John Boyle O’Reilly (1844-1890, Irish author)
The United Nations cannot do anything, and never could; it is not an animate entity or agent. It is a place, a stage, a forum and a shrine… a place to which powerful people can repair when they are fearful about the course on which their own rhetoric seems to be propelling them.
Conor Cruise O’Brien (1917-, Irish historian, critic, and statesman)
Love matches are made by people who are content, for a month of honey, to condemn themselves to a life of vinegar.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (1789-1849, Irish writer and socialite)
I can’t see or feel the conflict between love and religion. To me, they’re the same thing.
Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973, Anglo-Irish novelist)
Pity the selfishness of lovers: it is brief, a forlorn hope; it is impossible.
Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973, Anglo-Irish novelist)
When you love someone all your saved-up wishes start coming out.
Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973, Anglo-Irish novelist)
Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love, an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves.
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774, Anglo-Irish author, poet, playwright)
No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)
Lord, confound this surly sister, blight her brow with blotch and blister, cramp her larynx, lung and liver, in her guts a galling give her.
J. M. Synge (1871-1909, Irish poet, dramatist)
The life of man is a journey; a journey that must be traveled, however bad the roads or the accommodation.
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774, Anglo-Irish author, poet, playwright)
What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832, German poet, dramatist, novelist)
Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)
I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful. One almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking. It is all like an opera.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)
For we must share, if we would keep, that blessing from above; Ceasing to give, we cease to have; such is the law of love.
Richard Chevenix Trench (1807-1886, Irish ecclesiastic, archbishop of Dublin)
Disease can never be conquered, can never be quelled by emotion’s willful screaming or faith’s symbolic prayer. It can only be conquered by the energy of humanity and the cunning in the mind of man. In the patience of a Curie, in the enlightenment of a Faraday, a Rutherford, a Pasteur, a Nightingale, and all other apostles of light and cleanliness, rather than of a woebegone godliness, we shall find final deliverance from plague, pestilence, and famine.
Sean O’Casey (1884-1964, Irish dramatist)
We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)
I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)
I have believed the best of every man. And find that to believe is enough to make a bad man show his best, or even a good man swing his lantern higher.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)
The ordinary acts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest.
Thomas Moore (1779-1852, Irish poet)
Home life as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
A woman is a branchy tree and man a singing wind; and from her branches carelessly he takes what he can find.
James Stephens (1882-1950, Irish poet, author)
Nothing is more real than nothing.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)
True genius walks along a line, and, perhaps, our greatest pleasure is in seeing it so often near falling, without being ever actually down.
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774, Anglo-Irish author, poet, playwright)
Saying that a great genius is mad, while at the same time recognizing his artistic worth, is like saying that he had rheumatism or suffered from diabetes. Madness, in fact, is a medical term that can claim no more notice from the objective critic than he grants the charge of heresy raised by the theologian, or the charge of immorality raised by the police.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)
When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)
Genius is the gold in the mine; talent is the miner who works and brings it out.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (1789-1849, Irish writer and socialite)
The years like great black oxen tread the world, and God the herdsman treads them on behind, and I am broken by their passing feet.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)
To be born woman is to know — although they do not speak of it at school — women must labor to be beautiful.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)
Poetry is a mere drug, Sir.
George Farquhar (c.1677-1707, Irish playwright)
Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)
The charm, one might say the genius of memory, is that it is choosy, chancy, and temperamental: it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chewing a hunk of melon in the dust.
Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973, Anglo-Irish novelist)
Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
Observation is an old man’s memory.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)
The main thing that endears the United Nations to member governments, and so enables it to survive, is its proven capacity to fail. You can safely appeal to the United Nations in the comfortable certainty that it will let you down.
Conor Cruise O’Brien (1917-, Irish historian, critic, and statesman)
Is America a land of God where saints abide for ever? Where golden fields spread fair and broad, where flows the crystal river? Certainly not flush with saints, and a good thing, too, for the saints sent buzzing into man’s ken now are but poor-mouthed ecclesiastical film stars and cliche-shouting publicity agents. Their little knowledge bringing them nearer to their ignorance, ignorance bringing them nearer to death, but nearness to death no nearer to God.
Sean O’Casey (1884-1964, Irish dramatist)
From ’86 until the summer of last year, wherever I went, people would say, “You would have made a great James Bond! Weren’t you going to be James Bond? You should have been, you could have been, you may have been.” Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It was like unfinished business in my life. I couldn’t say no to it this time around.
Pierce Brosnan (1952-, Irish-born American actor)
Actors are loved because they are unoriginal. Actors stick to their script. The unoriginal man is loved by the mediocrity because this kind of “artistic” expression is something to which the merest five-eighth can climb.
Patrick Kavanagh (1905-1967, Irish poet, author)
Acting is therefore the lowest of the arts, if it is an art at all.
George Moore (1852-1933, Irish writer)
Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
You must not suppose, because I am a man of letters, that I never tried to earn an honest living.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
Easy writings curse is hard reading.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816, Anglo-Irish dramatist)
O Grub Street! how do I bemoan thee, whose graceless children scorn to own thee! . Yet thou hast greater cause to be ashamed of them, than they of thee.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)
Style may be defined as the proper words in the proper places.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)
As a man has no right to kill one of his children if it is diseased or insane, so a man who has made the gradual and conscious expression of his personality in literature the aim of his life, has no right to suppress himself any carefully considered work which seemed good enough when it was written. Suppression, if it is deserved, will come rapidly enough from the same causes that suppress the unworthy members of a man’s family.
J. M. Synge (1871-1909, Irish poet, dramatist)
The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)
You’ve got to do your own growing, not matter how tall your grandfather was.
Irish Proverb (Sayings of Irish origin)
Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)
The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs a lot less.
Brendan F. Behan (1923-1964, Irish writer)
The chief prerequisite for a escort is to have a flexible conscience and an inflexible politeness.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (1789-1849, Irish writer and socialite)
Blessed are the single-hearted, for they shall enjoy much peace. If you refuse to be hurried and pressed, if you stay your soul on God, nothing can keep you from that clearness of spirit which is life and peace. In that stillness you will know what His will is.
Amy Carmichael (1867-1951, Irish missionary)
We know there is intention and purpose in the universe, because there is intention and purpose in us.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
Everyone’s future is, in reality, uncertain and full of unknown treasures from which all may draw unguessed prizes.
Lord Dunsany (1879-1957, Irish playwright, novelist, poet)
Virtue, like a dowerless beauty, has more admirers than followers.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (1789-1849, Irish writer and socialite)
Better keep yourself clean and bright. You are the window through which you must see the world.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
It is as hard to satirize well a man of distinguished vices, as to praise well a man of distinguished virtues.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)
Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an aesthetic end.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)
He didn’t dare to, because his father had a weak heart and habitually threatened to drop dead if anybody hurt his feelings. You may have noticed that people with weak hearts are the tyrants of English married life.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them. But when they are away, we console ourselves for their absence by dwelling on their vices.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)
Here, with whitened hair, desires failing, strength ebbing out of him, with the sun gone down and with only the serenity and the calm warning of the evening star left to him, he drank to Life, to all it had been, to what it was, to what it would be. Hurrah!
Sean O’Casey (1884-1964, Irish dramatist)
There is nothing so absurd or ridiculous that has not at some time been said by some philosopher. Fontenelle says he would undertake to persuade the whole public of readers to believe that the sun was neither the cause of light or heat, if he could only get six philosophers on his side.
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774, Anglo-Irish author, poet, playwright)
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 (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labor of its unfamiliar thought.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)
It is impossible to read the daily press without being diverted from reality. You are full of enthusiasm for the eternal verities — life is worth living, and then out of sinful curiosity you open a newspaper. You are disillusioned and wrecked.
Patrick Kavanagh (1905-1967, Irish poet, author)
Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)
Friends are the thermometer by which we may judge the temperature of our fortunes.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (1789-1849, Irish writer and socialite)
Observe this, that tho a woman swear, forswear, lie, dissemble, back-bite, be proud, vain, malicious, anything, if she secures the main chance, she’s still virtuous; that’s a maxim.
George Farquhar (c.1677-1707, Irish playwright)
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, where wealth accumulates, and men decay.
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774, Anglo-Irish author, poet, playwright)
Wealth often takes away chances from men as well as poverty. There is none to tell the rich to go on striving, for a rich man makes the law that hallows and hollows his own life.
Sean O’Casey (1884-1964, Irish dramatist)
After all there is but one race — humanity.
George Moore (1852-1933, Irish writer)
My religion? Well, my dear, I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
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.
Sean O’Casey (1884-1964, Irish dramatist)
All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to the world by the hands of story-tellers and image-makers. Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets would prophesy and the teachers teach in vain.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)
Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by posterity because he was the last to discover America.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)
I think being a woman is like being Irish. Everyone says you’re important and nice, but you take second place all the same.
Iris Murdoch (1919-, British novelist, philosopher)
A pity beyond all telling is hid in the heart of love.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)
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