A man is original when he speaks the truth that has always been known to all good men.

Malice is only another name for mediocrity.

A man is original when he speaks the truth that has always been known to all good men.

What appears in newspapers is often new but seldom true.

A poet is never one of the people. He is detached, remote, and the life of small-time dances and talk about football would not be for him. He might take part but could not belong.

Ay - 'The Green Fool' business, the libel action over the head of it - did me a lot of damage. It destroyed the momentum.

How strange a thing like that happens to a man. He dabbles in something and does not realise that it is his life.

I want to reveal in a simple way the usual - and unusual - life of the city; the corporation workman, the busmen, policemen, the civil servants, the theatres, Moore Street and also, what occupies so large a place in Dublin's life, the literary and artistic.

In its truest manifestation, where it gives judgments, poetry is super-luxury. It would be interesting to see what would happen to a High Court judge if he were forced to follow the true poetic formula, doing the job for love, being forced into pubs for relief.

In the country places of Ireland, writing is held in certain awe: a writer was a dangerous man from whom they instinctively recoiled.

Letting the facts speak for themselves is an immoral principle when we all know that facts and figures can be selected to prove anything.

Life in cities is not a spring but a river, or rather, a water main. It progresses like a novel, artificially.

Natural life, lived naturally as it is lived in the countryside, has none of that progress which is the base of happiness. Men and women in rural communities can be compared to a spring that rises out of a rock and spreads in irregular ever-widening circles. But the general principle is static.

Poetry is not Irish or any other nationality; and when writers such as Messrs. Clarke, Farren and the late F. R. Higgins pursue Irishness as a poetic end, they are merely exploiting incidental local colour.

Publicity's a cancer. It eats out a man - till there's nothing but a shell left.

The exciting quality about Joyce is that when you read him, you are not told of the large public issues that were agitating the minds of politicians and journalists on those days. Joyce is interested in the mind of a man who has put five shillings on a horse.

The keynote of simple folk is bad manners, familiarity. They intrude on one's private soul.

The position is: the Gaelic language is no longer the native language; it is dead, yet food is being brought to the graveyard.

There is nothing as dead and as damned as an important thing. The things that really matter are casual, insignificant little things.

Wine and women do not go with song. Alcohol is the worst enemy of the imagination.

Yeats, protected to some extent by the Nationalistic movement, wrote out of a somewhat protected world, and so his work does not touch life deeply.

Young writers should keep out of pubs and remember that the cliche way of the artistic life is a lie.

Roosevelt's magic lay in one facet of his personality: He knew how to take the risk. No other man in public life I knew could so readily take the challenge of the new.

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.

Photography is a major force in explaining man to man.

The world is... the natural setting of, and field for, all my thoughts and all my explicit perceptions. Truth does not inhabit only the inner man, or more accurately, there is no inner man, man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself.

I am neither a child, a young man, nor an ancient; nor am I of any caste.

I want the municipality to be a helping hand to the man with a desire of sympathy, to help the fallen when it is not in their power to help themselves.

I always looked for a man to rescue me and bring me happiness. I bought into that myth, of course, and looked for my own Prince Charming.

A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man.

Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.

Let me first state that I believe that marriage is a sacred union between one man and one woman.

A man must be strong in that profession, he must have vigor of body and mind, yet I am all out of breath if I walk up a hill; I have not the heart to crush even a fly.

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

I believe that if a man does a job as well as a woman, he should be paid as much.

For a man to strike any women is most brutal, and I, as well as everyone else, think this far worse than any attempt to shoot, which, wicked as it is, is at least more comprehensible and more courageous.

There is always a type of man who says he loves his fellow men, and expects to make a living at it.

A man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.

The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity.

If a man is dumb, someone is going to get the best of him, so why not you? If you don't, you're as dumb as he is.

Happy the man who has been able to learn the causes of things.

Work is not man's punishment. It is his reward and his strength and his pleasure.

'Thou shalt not get found out' is not one of God's commandments; and no man can be saved by trying to keep it.

Sex is the most beautiful thing that can take place between a happily married man and his secretary.

Man has done a lot to make himself dangerous and animals get the worst of all of it. But then, man too is an animal.

A writer may tell me that he thinks man will ultimately become an ostrich. I cannot properly contradict him.

I think I had a more European outlook about the body and sex. The body is in no way dirty, and sex is something beautiful to give to and share with a lover. It has nothing to do with promiscuity, because I only believe in being in love with one man at a time.

A woman who thinks she is intelligent demands the same rights as man. An intelligent woman gives up.

What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man.