Great Throughts Treasury

"New York is my Lourdes, where I go for spiritual refreshment... a place where you're least likely to be bitten by a wild goat."

"Other people's interruptions of your work are relatively insignificant compared with the countless times you interrupt yourself."

"Pound notes are the best religion in the world."

"Shakespeare said pretty well everything and what he left out, James Joyce, with a judge from meself, put in."

"The Bible was a consolation to a fellow alone in the old cell. The lovely thin paper with a bit of mattress stuffing in it, if you could get a match, was as good a smoke as I ever tasted."

"The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs a lot less."

"The English and Americans dislike only some Irish--the same Irish that the Irish themselves detest, Irish writers--the ones that think."

"Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them."

"Other people have a nationality. The Irish and the Jews have a psychosis."

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

"No yesterdays are ever wasted for those who give themselves to today."

"The Irish are a very popular race? with themselves."

"The most important things to do in the world are to get something to eat, something to drink, and somebody to love you."

"The only thing I envy in young people is their livers."

"The sun was in mind to come out but having a look at the weather it was in lost heart and went back again."

"The terrorist is the one with the small bomb."

"There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary."

"When I came back to Dublin, I was court-martialled in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence."

"They took away our land, our language, and our religion; but they could never harness our tongues. When I came back to Dublin I was court martialed in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence."

"To get enough to eat was regarded as an achievement. To get drunk was a victory."

"What the hell difference does it make, left or right? There were good men lost on both sides."