Anglo irish author Quotes

“I love hearing my relations abused. It is the only thing that makes me put up with them at all.”

“Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return. With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one center of pain.”

“They are always asking a writer why he does not write like somebody else, or a painter why he does not paint like somebody else, quite oblivious of the fact that if either of them did anything of the kind he would cease to be an artist.”

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!”

“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.”

“When a love comes to an end, weaklings cry, efficient ones instantly find another love, and the wise already have one in reserve.”

“I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays.”

“All art is at once surface and symbol.”

“Everyone should keep someone else's diary.”

“A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.”

“Oh, I hate the cheap severity of abstract ethics!”

“I like hearing myself talk. It is one of my greatest pleasures. I often have long conversations all by myself. Sometimes I am so clever I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”

“All criticism is a form of autobiography”

“you will always love, and you will always be loved”

“Life is like a box of terrible analogies.”

“Credit is a young man's capital.”

“The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.”

“To toil for a hard master is bitter, but to have no master to toil for is more bitter still.”

“All great ideas are dangerous.”

“Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.”

“The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.”

“The one charm of the past is that it is the past.”

“If you meet at dinner a man who has spent his life in educating himself - a rare type in our time ... you rise from table richer, and conscious that a high ideal has for a moment touched and sanctified your days. But Oh! my dear Ernest, to sit next to a man who has spent his life in trying to educate others! What a dreadful experience that is!”

“I wrote when I did not know life;now that I do know the meaning of life,I have no more to write.Life cannot be written; life can only be lived.”

“I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not being misunderstood. Don't degrade me into the position of giving you useful information. Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”