Anglo irish author quotes Quotes

“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 steals their affection from her.”

“Create yourself. Be yourself your poem.”

“Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.”

“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.”

“Let me be dressed as I will, yet flies worms and flowers exceed me still.”

“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.”

“Had Windham possessed discretion in debate, or Sheridan in conduct, they might have ruled their age.”

“Biography lends to death a new terror.”

“Learn to differentiate between ignorance and stupidity.”

“I have never admitted the right of an elderly author to alter the work of a young author, even when the young author happens to be his former self.”

“You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not?”

“It is a maxim, that those, to whom everybody allows the second place, have an undoubted title to the first.”

“It is only the unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes.”

“Indeed, as any one who has ever worked among the poor knows only too well, the brotherhood of man is no mere poet's dream, it is a most depressing and humiliating reality.”

“Know thyself' was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, 'Be thyself' shall be written.”

“People say sometimes that Beauty is superficial. That may be so. But at least it is not so superficial as Thought is. To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.”

“Our laws make law impossible; our liberties destroy all freedom; our property is organized robbery; our morality an impudent hypocrisy; our wisdom is administered by inexperienced or mal-experienced dupes; our power wielded by cowards and weaklings; and our honour false in all its points. I am an enemy of the existing order for good reasons”

“I think life too complex a thing to be settled by these hard and fast rules.”

“Everything in moderation, including moderation.”

“Tread Lightly, she is near Under the snow, Speak gently, she can hear The daisies grow.”

“If I refuse to allow my leg to be amputated, its mortification and my death may prove that I was wrong; but if I let the leg go, nobody can ever prove that it would not have mortified had I been obstinate. Operation is therefore the safe side for the surgeon as well as the lucrative side.”

“To be in hell is to drift; to be in heaven is to steer.”

“Alas! it is a fearful thingTo feel another's guilt!”

“True love is just like regular love, but with more truth.”

“I live constantly in the fear of not being misunderstood.”

“Let a short Act of Parliament be passed, placing all street musicians outside the protection of the law, so that any citizenmay assail them with stones, sticks, knives, pistols or bombs without incurring any penalties.”

“All panegyrics are mingled with an infusion of poppy.”

“Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices.”

“As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them. They have made private terms with the enemy, and sold their birthright for very bad pottage. They must also be extraordinarily stupid.”

“An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them.”

“If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.”

“The worst of it is that I am perpetually being punished for nothing; this governor loves to punish, and he punishes by taking my books away from me. It's perfectly awful to let the mind grind itself away between the upper and nether millstones of regret and remorse without respite; with books my life would be livable -- any life.”

“All art is immortal. For emotion for the sake of emotion is the aim of art, and emotion for the sake of action is the aim of life.”

“Anybody can sympathise with all the sufferings of the pal, nevertheless it involves an extremely great mother nature to sympathise by using a friend's achievement.”

“Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.”

“And let me touch those curving claws of yellow ivory; and grasp the tail that like a monstrous asp coils round your heavy velvet paws.”

“Oh, come! That boot is on the other leg. Why should you call me to account for eating decently? If I battened on the scorched corpses of animals, you might well ask me why I did that”

“Fantastic shadows of birds”

“If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.”

“What is mind but motion in the intellectual sphere?”

“Illusion is the first of all pleasures.”

“The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.”

“Just as the orator marks his good things by a dramatic pause, or by raising and lowering his voice, or by gesture, so the writer marks his epigrams with italics, setting the little gem, so to speak, like a jeweler.”

“If you want to be a grocer, or a general, or a politician, or a judge, you will invariably become it; that is your punishment. If you never know what you want to be, if you live what some might call the dynamic life but what I will call the artistic life, if each day you are unsure of who you are and what you know you will never become anything, and that is your reward.”

“A man who desires to get married should know everything or nothing.”

“Lord AUGUSTUS:(looking around) Time to educate yourself, I suppose. DUMBY: No, time to forget all I have learned. That is much more important.”

“I also made it quite clear that Socialism means equality of income or nothing, and that under socialism you would not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly feed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you like it or not. If it were discovered that you had not character enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner; but whilst you were permitted to live you would have to live well.”

“It is personalities not principles that move the age.”

“I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would be an affront to your intelligence.”

“Credit is a young man's capital.”