Irish Dramatist Quotations

If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.

A translation is no translation, he said, unless it will give you the music of a poem along with the words of it.

One drink is too many for me and a thousand not enough.

The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.

Spare all I have, and take my life.

A man who is not afraid of the sea will soon be drowned, he said, for he will be going out on a day he shouldn't. But we do be afraid of the sea, and we do only be drownded now and again.

The absence of the heavy boot of Europe has preserved to these people the agile walk of the wild animal, while the general simplicity of their lives has given them many other points of physical perfection.

We were married for almost 45 years. We fought all the time, it wasn't a great love or anything, it wasn't a great, all-consuming passion. She was just there. A lot of people were startled because we didn't seem devoted but we were.

I say myself no depressed words just depressed minds.

There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.

One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead.

She had lost the art of conversation but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.

In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.

The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong.

There's nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It's a thing no married man knows anything about.

We are the only real aristocracy in the world: the aristocracy of money.

I was taken completely by surprise. My wife died within a few minutes from an asthma attack. I was utterly destroyed. I was mad, crazy, I was howling.

I restrain myself a great deal. I don't say it, or I phrase it differently. But now and again I drop a lulu because I cannot resist it.

When a man says money can do anything, that settles it. He hasn't any.

Critics are like eunuchs in a harem. They're there every night, they see it done every night, they see how it should be done every night, but they can't do it themselves.

There's no scandal like rags, nor any crime so shameful as poverty.

Suppression, if it is deserved, will come rapidly enough from the same causes that suppress the unworthy members of a man's family.

In a good play every speech should be as fully flavoured as a nut or apple.

The freedom of the sand seemed to give a stronger spirit of revolt, and some of the animals were only caught after a dangerous struggle.

Life is too important to be taken seriously.

Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.

These days man knows the price of everything, but the value of nothing.

A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.

A true friend stabs you in the front.

Ah, well, then I suppose I shall have to die beyond my means.

A man of great common sense and good taste -- meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.

A man who has no office to go to -- I don't care who he is -- is a trial of which you can have no conception.

Oh, the tiger will love you. There is no sincerer love than the love of food.

He's a man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.

The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

All that I desire to point out is the general principle that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.