Oct 16, 1854 - Nov 30, 1900
was an Irish writer and poet
Share this author:
As one knows the poet by his fine music, so one can recognize the liar by his rich rhythmic utterance, and in neither case will the casual inspiration of the moment suffice. Here, as elsewhere, practice must precede perfection.
The liar at any rate recognizes that recreation, not instruction, is the aim of conversation, and is a far more civilized being than the blockhead who loudly expresses his disbelief in a story which is told simply for the amusement of the company.
There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.
When a man has once loved a woman, he will do anything for her, except continue to love her.
When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her.
Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed.
The one person who has more illusions than the dreamer is the man of action.
The modern sympathy with invalids is morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others.
Twenty years of romance make a woman look like a ruin, but twenty years of marriage make her something like a public building.
Ignorance is like a delicate fruit; touch it, and the bloom is gone.
To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.
If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.
The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.
The man who says he has exhausted life generally means that life has exhausted him.
We quaff the cup of life with eager haste without draining it, instead of which it only overflows the brim -- objects press around us, filling the mind with the throng of desires that wait upon them, so that we have no room for the thoughts of death.
In old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press.
One knows so well the popular idea of health. The English country gentleman galloping after a fox -- the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.
The mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric--brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.
No man dies for what he knows to be true. Men die for what they want to be true, for what some terror in their hearts tells them is not true.
When a woman marries again it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.
The husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes.
The intellect is not a serious thing, and never has been. It is an instrument on which one plays, that is all.
Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us.
Questions are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are.
Private information is practically the source of every large modern fortune.
Musical people are so absurdly unreasonable. They always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be absolutely deaf.
Nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion.
Nowadays to be intelligible is to be found out.
They are horribly tedious when they are good husbands, and abominably conceited when they are not.
We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.
