John Boyle O'Reilly Quotations

With the advance of feudalism came the growth of iron armor, until, at last, a fighting-man resembled an armadillo.

All that is worth seeing in good boxing can best be witnessed in a contest with soft gloves. Every value is called out: quickness, force, precision, foresight, readiness, pluck, and endurance. With these, the rowdy and 'rough' are not satisfied.

Social equity is based on justice; politics change on the opinion of the time. The black man's skin will be a mark of social inferiority so long as white men are conceited, ignorant, unjust, and prejudiced. You cannot legislate these qualities out of the white - you must steal them out by teaching, illustration, and example.

Prize-Fighting is not the aim of boxing. This noble exercise ought not to be judged by the dishonesty or the low lives of too many of its professional followers. Let it stand alone, an athletic practice, on the same footing as boating or football.

The success of the suffrage movement would injure women spiritually and intellectually, for they would be assuming a burden though they knew themselves unable to bear it. It is the sediment, not the wave, of a sex. It is the antithesis of that highest and sweetest mystery - conviction by submission, and conquest by sacrifice.

It has always been the aim of royalty and aristocracy to lower the individual liberty and independence of the common people. A baron and a minute-man could not breathe the same air.

The brutalities of a fight with bare hands, the crushed nasal bones, maimed lips, and other disfigurements, which call for the utter abolition of boxing in the interests of humanity, at once disappear when the contestants cover their hands with large, soft-leather gloves.

It is heroic to prepare for war with a tyrant power. Patriots will always win the admiration of mankind for daring to meet the bloodshed of battle for their country's liberty. But the patriot who is willing to go to that sacrifice will be the first to condemn the aimless and secret shedding of blood in time of peace.

With the advent of chivalry, the art of boxing waned. The evolution of feudal aristocracy, with other and widely different exercises, pastimes and weapons from those of the common people, made boxing unfashionable.

The right word fitly spoken is a precious rarity.

The Greeks were the first boxers. Pugilism appears to have been one of the earliest distinctions in play and exercise that appeared between the Hellenes and their Asiatic fathers. The unarmed personal encounter was indicative of a sturdier manhood.

A good boxer, in striking the round blow, instead of loosening body and arm, gathers himself into a heap of muscularity and begins his blow where all blows ought to begin, from the solidarity of the right foot.

Women are at once the guardians and the well-spring of the world's faith, morality, and tenderness; and if ever they are degraded to a commonplace level with men, this fine essential quality will be impaired, and their weakness will have to beg and follow where now it guides and controls.

Woman suffrage is an unjust, unreasonable, unspiritual abnormality. It is a hard, undigested, tasteless, devitalized proposition. It is a half-fledged, unmusical, Promethean abomination. It is a quack bolus to reduce masculinity even by the obliteration of femininity.

The adoption of gloves for all contests will do more to preserve the practice of boxing than any other conceivable means. It will give pugilism new life, not only as a professional boxer's art, but as a general exercise.

No writer for the press, however humble, is free from the burden of keeping his purpose high and his integrity white.

Women ought to be fully guarded by law in all rights of property, labor, profession, etc.; but, roughly stated, the voting population ought to represent the fighting population.

Every boy in a free country ought to be instructed in boxing, wrestling, and the use of weapons. Every young man ought to be drilled. Every householder ought, at least, to have a right to own a rifle, and should know how to make cartridges.

Putting prize-fighting altogether aside as one of the unavoidable evils attending on this manly exercise, the inestimable value of boxing as a training, discipline, and development of boys and young men remains.

In 1889, I predict, the legislative stage of the Irish question will have arrived; and the union with England, which shall then have cursed Ireland for nine tenths of a century, will be repealed.

Loyalty is the greatest quality of the human heart.

I'd rather live in Bohemia than in any other land.

For the love that is purest and sweetest Has a kiss of desire on the lips.

For all time to come, the freedom and purity of the press are the test of national virtue and independence. No writer for the press, however humble, is free from the burden of keeping his purpose high and his integrity white.

They who see the Flying Dutchman never, never reach the shore.

The wealth of mankind is the wisdom they leave.

A dreamer lives forever, And a toiler dies in a day.

And we who have toiled for freedom's law, have we sought for freedom's soul? Have we learned at last that human right is not a part but the whole?

Put least trust in him who is foremost to praise you, nor judge of a road till it draw to the end.

Who heeds not experience, trust him not.

Ireland is a fruitful mother of genius, but a barren nurse.

The red rose whispers of passion, And the white rose breathes of love; O, the red rose is a falcon, And the white rose is a dove.

Be silent and safe-silence never betrays you.

Each heart holds the secret: 'Kindness' is the word.

Take gifts with a sigh: most men give to be paid.

The world is large when its weary leagues two loving hearts divide; But the world is small when your enemy is loose on the other side.

Our life a harp is, with unnumbered strings, And tones and symphonies; but our poor skill Some shallow notes from its great music brings.

When honor comes to you, be ready to take it; But reach not to seize it before it is near.

Doubt is brother-devil to Despair.

Anonymity is the fame of the future.

... every man on the planet Has just as much right as yourself to the road.

The organized charity, scrimped and iced, In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ.

Too late we learn, a man must hold his friend Unjudged, accepted, trusted to the end.

For peace do not hope; to be just you must break it. Still work for the minute and not for the year.

How shall I a habit break? As you did that habit make, As you gathered, you must lose; As you yielded, now refuse, Thread by thread the strands we twist Till they bind us neck and wrist, Thread by thread the patient hand Must untwine ere free we stan

Well blest is he who has a dear one dead; A friend he has whose face will never change- A dear communion that will not grow strange; The anchor of a love is death.