Quotes by Irish/Ireland authors (page 3)

"Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds"

Oscar Wilde, Dramatist

"A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally"

Oscar Wilde, Dramatist

"Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads"

George Bernard Shaw, Dramatist

"Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything"

George Bernard Shaw, Dramatist

"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing"

George Bernard Shaw, Dramatist

"Old men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world"

George Bernard Shaw, Dramatist

"England and America are two countries separated by the same language"

George Bernard Shaw, Dramatist

"An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable"

George Bernard Shaw, Dramatist

"Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old"

Jonathan Swift, Writer

"As blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense"

Jonathan Swift, Writer

"No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found"

Samuel Beckett, Playwright

"In the landscape of extinction, precision is next to godliness"

Samuel Beckett, Playwright

"There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being"

James Joyce, Novelist

"Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow"

James Joyce, Novelist

"I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day"

James Joyce, Novelist

"The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts"

James Joyce, Novelist

"No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination"

James Joyce, Novelist

"Cast your mind on other days that we in coming days may be still the indomitable Irishry"

William Butler Yeats, Poet

"I have some women friends but I prefer men. Don't trust women. There is a built-in competition between women"

Edna O'Brien, Novelist

"Money can't buy you happiness but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery"

Spike Milligan, Comedian

"There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary"

Brendan Behan, Dramatist

"Shakespeare said pretty well everything and what he left out, James Joyce, with a judge from meself, put in"

Brendan Behan, Dramatist

"He is every other inch a gentleman"

Rebecca West, Author

"The less you know, the more you believe"

Bono, Musician

"God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide"

Rebecca West, Author

"And the heart that is soonest awake to the flowers is always the first to be touch'd by the thorns"

Thomas Moore, Poet

"In the past I have defended the right of the IRA to engage in armed struggle. I did so because there was no alternative for those who would not bend the knee, or turn a blind eye to oppression, or for those who wanted a national republic"

Gerry Adams, Politician

"Remorse: beholding heaven and feeling hell"

George A. Moore, Novelist

"A laugh is a terrible weapon"

Kate O'Brien, Novelist

"How can I be in two places at once, unless I were a bird?"

Boyle Roche, Politician

"Amongst Women concentrated on the family, and the new book concentrates on a small community. The dominant units in Irish society are the family and the locality. The idea was that the whole world would grow out from that small space"

John McGahern, Writer

"God has been pleased to save us during the years of war that have already passed. We pray that He may be pleased to save us to the end. But we must do our part"

Eamon de Valera, Statesman