Irishisms - Quareness Series 133rd "Lecture".
To start off the year on an Irish note -
Brendan Behan...
"Every cripple has his own way of walking."
"If you accept your limitations you go beyond them."
"I'm hoarse listening to my wife complaining."
"There is no bad publicity - except an obituary notice."
"When I came back to Dublin I was courtmartialled in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence."
Flann O'Brien...
"The right to pay fees to lawyers is an ancient and fundamental human right, and is at the kernal of what we know as democracy."
George Bernard Shaw...
"If you take too long in deciding what to do with your life, you'll find you've done it."
"A businessman is someone to whom age brings golf rather than wisdom."
"You don't stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing."
"Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything."
"When a thing is funny, search it for a hidden truth."
Hal Roach...
"Irish atheists have started a Dial-A-Prayer service; when you ring them, nobody answers."
James Joyce...
"Mistakes are the portals of discovery."
"Your mind will give back exactly what you put into it."
James Stephens...
"Men come of age at sixty, women at sixteen."
Jimmy O'Dea...
"An undertaker is the last man to let you down."
Jonathan Swift...
"May you live all the days of your life."
"Laws are like cobwebs which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets through."
"Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed."
"Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others."
"Argument is the worst sort of conversation."
"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."
Lady Augusta Gregory...
"It's best to make changes little by little, the same as you'd put clothes upon a growing child."
Maureen Potter...
"The only thing that has to be finished by next Friday is next Thursday."
Oliver Goldsmith...
"People seldom improve when they have no model other than themselves to copy."
Oscar Wilde...
"Examinations consist of the foolish asking questions the wise cannot answer."
"Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes."
"Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do."
"A man who says his wife can't take a joke forgets that she took him."
"One can survive anything nowadays except death."
"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative."
"I can resist everything except temptation."
"No good deed ever goes unpunished."
"It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information around."
"When the gods want to punish us they answer our prayers."
"When you convert someone to an idea you lose faith in it."
"A little sincerety is a dangerous thing and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal."
"Duty is what one expects from others. It is not what one does oneself."
"Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike."
"Questions are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are."
"There is only one thing worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about."
Padraic Colum...
"The ideal marriage consists of a deaf husband and a blind wife."
Richard Harris...
"I am in God's departure lounge and I've managed to miss a few scheduled flights."
Samuel Beckett...
"Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards."
"Words are the clothes thoughts wear."
"What is that unforgettable line?"
"Probably nothing in the world arouses more false hopes than the first four hours of a diet."
"Habit is a great deadener."
"Better hope deferred than none."
Seán Ó Faoláin...
"Did it ever occur to you that the bottom of a whiskey bottle is much too near to the top?"
W.B.Yeats...
"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."
"There are no strangers here only friends you haven't yet met."
"Was there ever a dog that praised his fleas?"
"All empty souls tend towards extreme opinions."
"I am not feeling very well today. I can only write prose."
"Some people say there is a God; others say there is no God. The truth probably lies somewhere in between."
Some Irish Proverbs...
Good advice has no price.
Often has the likely failed and the unlikely succeeded.
What everyone knows is hardly worth knowing.
Empty heads keep open mouths.
If you'd prefer to be doing something else, you're working.
Keep your eyes half open before you get married and half shut afterwards.
Death is the poor man's doctor.
Some Irish Sayings...
The family without a skeleton in the cupboard has it buried.
There's one good thing about a late marriage - it doesn't last long.
Marry the right woman and there's nothing like it; marry the wrong woman and there's nothing like it.
And to finish off...an Irish Blessing...
May the Good Lord take a liking to you, but not too soon.
Sean.
Dean of Quareness.
January, 2021.