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Over the centuries, Irish authors have produced some of the most iconic and enduring literature worldwide. We’ve collected quotes from 10 of our favorite Irish authors, poets and playwrights that we feel demonstrate the famous Irish way with words.
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‘Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; if you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.’ – Jonathan Swift
‘Do not wait to strike ‘til the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.’ – W.B. Yeats
‘I often quote myself; it adds spice to my conversations.’- George Bernard Shaw
‘No human being believes that any other human being has a right to be in bed when he himself is up.’ – Robert Lynd
‘Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall.’ – Oliver Goldsmith
‘I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train.’ – Oscar Wilde
‘Writing is learning to say nothing, more cleverly each day’ – William Allingham
‘All the world’s a stage, and most of us are desperately unrehearsed’ – Seán O’Casey
‘Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.’ – C.S. Lewis
‘It's a good thing to be able to take up your money in your hand and to think no more of it when it slips away from you than you would of a trout that would slip back into the stream.’ – Lady Gregory
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