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Authors:

Flann O'Brien quotes

Irish Writer October 5, 1911 – April 1, 1966

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Quotes

Whichever day it was, it was a gently day - mild, magical and innocent with great sailing of white cloud serene and impregnable in the high sky, moving along like kingly swans on quiet water. The sun was in the neighbourhood also, distributing his enchantment unobtrusively, colouring the sides of things that were unalive and livening the hearts of living things. Flann O'Brien
After a time," said old Mathers disregarding me, "I mercifully perceived the errors of my ways and the unhappy destination I would reach unless I mended them. I retired from the world in order to try to comprehend it and to find out why it becomes more unsavoury as the years accumulate on a man's body. What do you think I discovered at the end of my meditations?"I felt pleased again. He was now questioning me."What?"That No is a better word than Yes," he replied. Flann O'Brien
Descartes spent far too much time in bed subject to the persistent hallucination that he was thinking. You are not free from a similar disorder. Flann O'Brien
Anybody who has the courage to raise his eyes and look sanely at the awful human condition ... must realize finally that tiny periods of temporary release from intolerable suffering is the most that any individual has the right to expect. Flann O'Brien
Flann O'Brien quote: "Hell goes round and round. In shape it is circular, and by..."
Hell goes round and round. In shape it is circular, and by nature it is interminable, repetitive, and nearly unbearable. Flann O'Brien
Everything is composed of small particles of itself and they are flying around in concentric circles and arcs and segments and innumerable other geometrical figures too numerous to mention collectively, never standing still or resting but spinning away and darting hither and thither and back again, all the time on the go. These diminutive gentlemen are called atoms. Do you follow me intelligently? Flann O'Brien
Flann O'Brien quote: "My father...was a man who understood all dogs thoroughly and..."
My father...was a man who understood all dogs thoroughly and treated them like human beings. Flann O'Brien
...is there any body of citizens in the country who actually welcome and enjoy a General Election?..YES. Those citizens are schoolchildren...attending national schools. It may be very cynical, but on the appointed day those Lyceums of lower learning are turned into polling stations, the homes of innocence temporarily become part of the grim apparatus of politics and the scheming of sundry chancers. Flann O'Brien
Do you know what I am going to tell you, he said with his wry mouth, a pint of plain is your only man. Notwithstanding this eulogy, I soon found that the mass of plain porter bears an unsatisfactory relation to its toxic content and I subsequently became addicted to brown stout in bottle, a drink which still remains the one that I prefer the most despite the painful and blinding fits of vomiting which a plurality of bottles has often induced in me. Flann O'Brien
Who is Fox?", I asked."Policeman Fox is the third of us," said the Sergeant, "but we never see him or hear tell of him at because he is always on his beat and never off it and he signs the book in the middle of the night when even a badger is asleep. He is as mad as a hare, he never interrogates the public and he is always taking notes. Flann O'Brien
With these words there came the rending scream of a shattered stirk and an angry troubling of the branches as the poor madman percolated through the sieve of a sharp yew, a wailing black meteor hurtling through green clouds, a human prickles. Flann O'Brien
Flann O'Brien quote: "Supposing you are a lady so completely dumb that the dogs in..."
Supposing you are a lady so completely dumb that the dogs in the street do not think you are worth growling at. Flann O'Brien
I cannot say whether there is fur on my wife's legs for I have never seen them nor do I intend to commit myself to the folly of looking at them. In any event and in all politeness -nothing would be further from me than to insult a guest- I deem the point you have made as unimportant because there is surely nothing in the old world to prevent a deceitful kangaroo from shaving the fur from her legs, assuming she is a woman? Flann O'Brien
Here I had a strange idea not unworthy of de Selby. Why was Joe so disturbed at the suggestion that he had a body? What if he had a body? A body with another body inside it in turn, thousands of such bodies within each other like the skins of an onion, receding to some unimaginable ultimum? Was I in turn merely a link in a vast sequence of imponderable beings, the world I knew merely the interior of the being whose inner voice I myself was? Who or what was the core and what monster in what... Flann O'Brien
Flann O'Brien quote: "Your talk," I said, "is surely the handiwork of wisdom because..."
Your talk," I said, "is surely the handiwork of wisdom because not one word of it do I understand. Flann O'Brien

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