Quotes by Irish authors

See the complete list of authors from Ireland

Bono

"Distance does not decide who is your brother and who is not. The church is going to have to become the conscience of the free market if it's to have any meaning in this world - and stop being its apologist"

Bono, Musician

Bono

"We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong"

Bono, Musician

Bono

"Africa is a continent in flames. And deep down, if we really accepted that Africans were equal to us, we would all do more to put the fire out. We're standing around with watering cans, when what we really need is the fire brigade"

Bono, Musician

Bono

"You see, idealism detached from action is just a dream. But idealism allied with pragmatism, with rolling up your sleeves and making the world bend a bit, is very exciting. It's very real. It's very strong"

Bono, Musician

Bono

"The fact is that ours is the first generation that can look disease and extreme poverty in the eye, look across the ocean to Africa, and say this, and mean it. We do not have to stand for this. A whole continent written off - we do not have to stand for this"

Bono, Musician

"The American struggle for the vote was much more difficult than the English for the simple reason that it was much more easy"

Rebecca West, Author

"Journalism: an ability to meet the challenge of filling the space"

Rebecca West, Author

"But there are other things than dissipation that thicken the features. Tears, for example"

Rebecca West, Author

"Did St. Francis preach to the birds? Whatever for? If he really liked birds he would have done better to preach to the cats"

Rebecca West, Author

"All men should have a drop of treason in their veins, if nations are not to go soft like so many sleepy pears"

Rebecca West, Author

"There is no logical reason why the camel of great art should pass through the needle of mob intelligence"

Rebecca West, Author

"Life ought to be a struggle of desire toward adventures whose nobility will fertilize the soul"

Rebecca West, Author

"International relationships are preordained to be clumsy gestures based on imperfect knowledge"

Rebecca West, Author

"I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat"

Rebecca West, Author

"It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of skunk"

Rebecca West, Author

"I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute"

Rebecca West, Author

"Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy; but after a war it seems more like astrology"

Rebecca West, Author

"Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience"

Rebecca West, Author

"A strong hatred is the best lamp to bear in our hands as we go over the dark places of life, cutting away the dead things men tell us to revere"

Rebecca West, Author

"Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs"

Rebecca West, Author

"Great music is in a sense serene; it is certain of the values it asserts"

Rebecca West, Author

"Everyone realizes that one can believe little of what people say about each other. But it is not so widely realized that even less can one trust what people say about themselves"

Rebecca West, Author

"People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute"

Rebecca West, Author

"I write books to find out about things"

Rebecca West, Author

"Humanity is never more sphinxlike than when it is expressing itself"

Rebecca West, Author

"There have been no sects in the Christian world, however absurd, which have not endeavoured to support their opinions by arguments drawn from Scripture"

Laurence Sterne, Novelist

"The desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it"

Laurence Sterne, Novelist

"Of all duties, prayer certainly is the sweetest and most easy"

Laurence Sterne, Novelist

"Nothing is so perfectly amusing as a total change of ideas"

Laurence Sterne, Novelist

"Men tire themselves in pursuit of rest"

Laurence Sterne, Novelist

"Lessons of wisdom have the most power over us when they capture the heart through the groundwork of a story, which engages the passions"

Laurence Sterne, Novelist

"Keyholes are the occasions of more sin and wickedness, than all other holes in this world put together"

Laurence Sterne, Novelist

"It is a great pity but tis certain from every day's observation of man, that he may be set on fire like a candle, at either end provided there is a sufficient wick standing out"

Laurence Sterne, Novelist

"In solitude the mind gains strength and learns to lean upon itself"

Laurence Sterne, Novelist

"In all unmerciful actions, the worst of men pay this compliment at least to humanity, as to endeavour to wear as much of the appearance of it, as the case will well let them"

Laurence Sterne, Novelist

"I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me"

Laurence Sterne, Novelist

"I take a simple view of life. It is keep your eyes open and get on with it"

Laurence Sterne, Novelist

"I once asked a hermit in Italy how he could venture to live alone, in a single cottage, on the top of a mountain, a mile from any habitation? He replied, that Providence was his next-door neighbor"

Laurence Sterne, Novelist

"I am persuaded that every time a man smiles - but much more so when he laughs - it adds something to this fragment of life"

Laurence Sterne, Novelist

"God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb"

Laurence Sterne, Novelist

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