"There seemed an unwritten agreement that the Thunder God should be left in peace, which was probably due to the very clearly written message painted on a whitewashed wall in what looked like lumpy congealed blood, which read: Leave me in peace and I probably won't kill you. No promise, mind. Probably is absolutely the best I can do."

"“Nice shirt, Fletcher,” said Sergeant Murt Hourihan. “”You looking for a job in a surf store?”"

"Red held me at arm’s length, grinning. “Welcome to the family, Half Moon,” he said."

"There is no dealing with great sorrow as if it were under the control of our wills. It is a terrible phenomenon, whose laws we must study, and to whose conditions we must submit, if we would mitigate it."

"The world," he resumed after a short pause, "has no faith in any man's conversion; it never forgets what he was, it never believes him anything better, it is an inexorable and stupid judge."

"How marvellously lie our anxieties, in filmy layers, one over the other! Take away that which has lain on the upper surface for so long – the care of cares – the only one, as it seemed to you, between your soul and the radiance of Heaven – and straight you find a new stratum there."

"There comes with old age a time when the heart is no longer fusible or malleable, and must retain the form in which it has cooled down."

"He has attained supremacy in one particular line: he succeeds in inspiring a mysterious terror better than any other writer."

"Sure the shovel and tongs To each other belongs."

"Sure my love is all crost Like a bud in the frost And there's no use at all in my going to bed, For 't is dhrames and not slape that comes into my head!"

"And with my advice, faith I wish you'd take me."

"As she sat in the low-backed car The man at the turn-pike bar Never asked for the toll But just rubbed his auld poll And looked after the low-backed car."

"Reproof on her lip, but a smile in her eye."

"For dhrames always go by conthraries, my dear."

"A baby was sleeping, Its mother was weeping, For her husband was far on the wild-raging sea."

""That 's eight times to-day that you 've kissed me before." "Then here goes another," says he, "to make sure, For there 's luck in odd numbers," says Rory O'More."

"For a ballad's a thing you expect to find lies in."

"The duty of a lyrical poet is not to express or explain, it is to intensify life."

"Speech and prose are not the same thing. They have different wave-lengths, for speech moves at the speed of light, where prose moves at the speed of the alphabet, and must be consecutive and grammatical and word-perfect. Prose cannot gesticulate. Speech can sometimes do nothing else."

"Finality is death. Perfection is finality. Nothing is perfect. There are lumps in it."

"Because our lives are cowardly and sly, Because we do not dare to take or give, Because we scowl and pass each other by, We do not live; we do not dare to live."

"Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will."

"If I asked her master he'd give me a cask a day; But she, with the beer at hand, not a gill would arrange! May she marry a ghost and bear him a kitten, and may The High King of Glory permit her to get the mange."

"I would think Until I found Something I can never find; – Something Lying On the ground, In the bottom Of my mind."

"Frank Harris has no feelings. It is the secret of his success. Just as the fact that he thinks other people have none either is the secret of the failure that lies in wait for him somewhere on the way of Life."

"The pleasure of being with you is in the clash of personality, the intellectual battle, the war of ideas. To survive you one must have a strong brain, an assertive ego, a dynamic character. In your luncheon-parties, in old days, the remains of the guests were taken away with the débris of the feast. I have often lunched with you in Park Lane and found myself the only survivor."

"... truth was a mortal enemy of beauty."

"Christ goes deeper than I do, but I have had a wider experience."

"Casanova! My dear man, Casanova is not worthy to untie my bootstrings!"

"My dear Duke, I know nothing of the joys of homo-sexuality. You must speak to my friend Oscar about that. And yet, if Shakespeare had asked me, I would have had to submit."

"Happiness is not essential to the artist; happiness never creates anything but memories."

"Just as work is the curse of the drinking classes of this country," [Wilde] said laughing, "so education is the curse of the acting classes."

"Shaw's relations with women have always been gallant, coy even. The number he has surrendered to physically have been few – perhaps not half a dozen in all – the first man to have cut a path through the theatre and left it strewn with virgins."

"I am, really, a great writer; my only difficulty is in finding great readers."

"Strong men are made by opposition; like kites they go up against the wind."

"Half-buried to her flaming breast In this bright tree, she makes her nest, Hundred-sunned Phoenix! when she must Crumble at length to hoary dust!"

"O fast her amber blood doth flow From the heart-wounded Incense Tree, Fast as earth’s deep-embosom’d woe In silent rivulets to the sea!"

"Give me, instead of beauty's bust, A tender heart, a loyal mind, Which with temptation I could trust, Yet never linked with error find."

"It is not Beauty I demand, A crystal brow, the moon's despair, Nor the snow's daughter, a white hand, Nor mermaid's yellow pride of hair."

"Sweet in her green dell the flower of beauty slumbers, Lull'd by the faint breezes sighing through her hair; Sleeps she and hears not the melancholy numbers Breathed to my sad lute 'mid the lonely air."

"Come then, my bird! For the peace thou ever bearest, Still Heaven's messenger of comfort to me— Come—this fond bosom, O faithfullest and fairest, Bleeds with its death-wound, its wound of love for thee!"

"Everything has an ending: there will be An ending one sad day for you and me, And ending of the days we had together, The good companionship, all kinds of weather."