Flann O'Brien Quotes

33 quotes in 671 categories

• I suppose we all have our recollections of our earlier holidays, all bristling with horror.
• He went home one evening and drank three cups of tea with three lumps of sugar in each cup, cut his jugular with a razor…
• The dusk was performing its customary intransitive operation of "gathering".
• Hell goes round and round. In shape it is circular, and by nature it is interminable, repetitive, and nearly unbearable.
• The majority of the members of the Irish parliament are professional politicians, in the sense that otherwise they would not be given jobs minding mice…
• I mean to say, whether a yarn is tall or small I like to hear it well told. I like to meet a man that…
• Past humanity is not only implicit in each new man born but is contained in him. Humanity is an ever-widening spiral and life is the…
• The first beginnings of wisdom...is to ask questions but never to answer any.
• Why should anyone steal a watch when he could steal a bicycle?
• Waiting for the German verb is surely the ultimate thrill.
• The only result my father got for his money was the certainty that his son had laid faultlessly the foundation of a system of heavy…
• A woman doesn't care if she hasn't a stomach, provided she looks as if she hasn't.
• It is clear enough that you are making some distinction in what you said, that there is some nicety of terminology in your words. I…
• 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…
• Questions are like the knocks of beggarmen, and should not be minded.
• The continual cracking of your feet on the road makes a certain quantity of road come up into you. When a man dies they say…
• Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my…
• 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.
• Your talk," I said, "is surely the handiwork of wisdom because not one word of it do I understand.
• I saw that my witticism was unperceived and quietly replaced it in the treasury of my mind.

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