Quotes by Irish/Ireland authors (page 5)

"Certainly nothing is unnatural that is not physically impossible"

"There's no possibility of being witty without a little ill-nature"

"The glorious uncertainty of the law was a thing well known and complained of, by all ignorant people, but all learned gentleman considered it as its greatest excellency"

Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Playwright

"Its safest in matrimony to begin with a little aversion"

Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Playwright

"A bumper of good liquor will end a contest quicker than justice, judge, or vicar"

Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Playwright

"I open with a clock striking, to beget an awful attention in the audience - it also marks the time, which is four o clock in the morning, and saves a description of the rising sun, and a great deal about gilding the eastern hemisphere"

Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Playwright

"Conscience has no more to do with gallantry than it has with politics"

Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Playwright

"Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind"

Jonathan Swift, Writer

"One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good"

Jonathan Swift, Writer

"May you live all the days of your life"

Jonathan Swift, Writer

"He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue"

Jonathan Swift, Writer

"Observation is an old man's memory"

Jonathan Swift, Writer

"You can never plan the future by the past"

Edmund Burke, Statesman

"The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse"

Edmund Burke, Statesman

"Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing"

Edmund Burke, Statesman

"Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other"

Edmund Burke, Statesman

"Beauty is the promise of happiness"

Edmund Burke, Statesman

"Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny"

Edmund Burke, Statesman

"Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards"

Samuel Beckett, Playwright

"Just under the surface I shall be, all together at first, then separate and drift, through all the earth and perhaps in the end through a cliff into the sea, something of me. A ton of worms in an acre, that is a wonderful thought, a ton of worms, I believe it"

Samuel Beckett, Playwright

"James Joyce was a synthesizer, trying to bring in as much as he could. I am an analyzer, trying to leave out as much as I can"

Samuel Beckett, Playwright

"I can't go on. I'll go on"

Samuel Beckett, Playwright

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better"

Samuel Beckett, Playwright

"All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead"

Samuel Beckett, Playwright

"My mouth is full of decayed teeth and my soul of decayed ambitions"

James Joyce, Novelist

"Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize"

James Joyce, Novelist

"I think a child should be allowed to take his father's or mother's name at will on coming of age. Paternity is a legal fiction"

James Joyce, Novelist

"A man's errors are his portals of discovery"

James Joyce, Novelist

"Nations have their ego, just like individuals"

James Joyce, Novelist

"Think where mans glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends"

William Butler Yeats, Poet

"Nor dread nor hope attend a dying animal; a man awaits his end dreading and hoping all"

William Butler Yeats, Poet

"Those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love"

William Butler Yeats, Poet

"You know what the Englishman's idea of compromise is? He says, Some people say there is a God. Some people say there is no God. The truth probably lies somewhere between these two statements"

William Butler Yeats, Poet

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity"

William Butler Yeats, Poet

"People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind"

William Butler Yeats, Poet

"Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame!"

William Butler Yeats, Poet

"Come away, O human child: To the waters and the wild with a fairy, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand"

William Butler Yeats, Poet

"Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought - asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation"

William Butler Yeats, Poet

"Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy"

William Butler Yeats, Poet

"A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and unstitching has been naught"

William Butler Yeats, Poet

Page 5 of 56

Quotes by Irish authors