journalists-from-ireland

"No human vanity can be more pitiable than that of seeking to give an eternity of preservation to particles of dust, which were put into order and symmetry only for the fleeting purposes of this life."

"For your Tories his fine Irish brain he would spin, Who received prose and rhyme with a promising grin, "Go ahead, you queer fish, and more power to your fin!" But to save from starvation stirred never a pin... But at last he was beat, and sought help of the bin, (All the same to the Doctor, from claret to gin), Which led swiftly to gaol, with consumption therein; It was much, when the bones rattled loose in his skin. He got leave to die here, out of Babylon’s din. Barring drinks and the girls, I ne’er heard of a sin, Many worse, better few, than bright broken Maginn."

"You've heard, I suppose, long ago, How the snakes, in a manner most antic, He march'd to the County Mayo, And trundled them into th' Atlantic. Hence not to use water for drink The people of Ireland determine; With mighty good reason, I think, Since St Patrick has fill'd it with vermin, And vipers, and other such stuff."

"Every popular preacher is a goose."

"The best of all pies is a grouse-pie."

"No tom cat ever paid more determined attention to mouse-catching pastime, than did the General to his favourite pleasure of pouncing upon the invalid officer, who but dared to show himself out of his melancholy quarters. He conceived that no man could possibly be sick, who was able to move his legs; and if a half dead officer could but smoke a cigar, or twist the corners of his mouth into a smile, the whole medical staff could not have persuaded the General out of his opinion, that such a person was not only in excellent health, but fit to brave the rudest weather, and the severest duties of the field."

"People may talk as they like, but after all, London is London."

"There is no such thing as female genius."

"Ass-milk, they say, tastes exceedingly like woman's. No wonder."

"Hock cannot be too much, claret cannot be too little, iced."

"We moderns are perhaps inferior to our ancestors in nothing more than in our epitaphs."

"In order to know what cod really is, you must eat it in Newfoundland."

"It is singular that scarcely any tailor who can make a coat well, can make pantaloons."

"A band of gallant souls, who knew The olive wood, the mountain blue, The ration rum, the biscuit black, The long bleak road, the bivouac, The cannon's thunder, and the bays That wave o'er glorious victories, Better than city's midnight dress, Her luxuries, and gaudiness."

"Poetry is like claret, one enjoys it only when it is very new, or when it is very old."

"In literature and in love we generally begin in bad taste."

"Tap claret tastes best out of a pewter pot."

"No cigar-smoker ever committed suicide."

"Never take lobster-sauce to salmon; it is mere painting of the lily, or, I should rather say, of the rose."

"The safety of women consists in one circumstance: Men do not possess at the same time the knowledge of thirty-five and the blood of seventeen."

"Whenever you see a book frequently advertised, you may be pretty sure it is a bad one. If you see a puff quoted in the advertisement, you may be quite sure."

"He whose friendship is worth having, must hate and be hated."

"If prudes were as pure as they would have us believe, they would not rail so bitterly as they do. We do not thoroughly hate that which we do not thoroughly understand."

"Maxims are hard reading, demanding a constant stretch of the intellectual faculties. Every word must be diligently pondered, every assertion examined in all its bearings, pursued with a keen eye to its remotest consequences, rejected with a philosophic calmness, or treasured up with the same feeling as a "κτημα ες αει" — a "possession to eternity.""

"In general, in-door prospects are the best. What purling brook matches the music of my gurgling bottle? What is an old roofless cathedral compared to a well-built pie?"

"Claret should always be decanted."

"Cold pig's face is one of the best things in the world for breakfast."

"Never wear a coat with a velvet collar."

"Some people tell you you should not drink claret after strawberries. They are wrong, if the claret be good. The milky taste of good claret coheses admirably with strawberries — somewhat like cream."

"The wight can tell A melancholy and a merry tale Of field, and fight, and chief, and lady gay."

"Marrying girls is a nice matter always; for they are as cautious as crows plundering a corn-field. ... I don't myself, I profess, upon principle, see any objection to marrying a widow. ... If a woman, however, has had more than three husbands, she poisons them: avoid her."

"When a man is drunk, it is no matter upon what he has got drunk."

"Much is to be said in favour of toasted cheese for supper."

"The finest of all times for flirting is a wedding. They are all agog, poor things!"

"I see His blood upon the rose, And in the stars the glory of His eyes; His body gleams amid eternal snows; His tears fall from the skies."

"When asked what State he hails from, Our sole reply shall be, He comes from Appomattox, And its famous apple-tree."

"[The Russians] dashed on towards that thin red line tipped with steel."

"Why Beauregard does not come I know not, nor can I well guess. ... The inmates of the White House are in a state of the utmost trepidation, and Mr. Lincoln... in despair..."

"The impression produced by the size of his extremities, and by his flapping and wide projecting ears, may be removed by the appearance of kindliness, sagacity, and the awkward bonhommie of his face; the mouth is absolutely prodigious; the lips, straggling and extending almost from one line of black beard to the other, are only kept in order by two deep furrows from the nostril to the chin; the nose itself — a prominent organ — stands out from the face, with an inquiring, anxious air, as though it were sniffing for some good thing in the wind; the eyes dark, full, and deeply set, are penetrating, but full of an expression which almost amounts to tenderness; and above them projects the shaggy brow, running into the small hard frontal space, the development of which can scarcely be estimated accurately, owing to the irregular flocks of thick hair carelessly brushed across it."

"I saw a steady stream of men covered with mud, soaked through with rain, who were pouring irregularly, without any semblance of order, up Pennsylvania Avenue towards the Capitol. ... I ran down-stairs and asked an "officer," who was passing by, a pale young man, who looked exhausted to death, and who bad lost his sword, for the empty sheath dangled at his side, where the men were coming from. "Where from? Well, sir, I guess we're all coming out of Virginny as fast as we can, and pretty well whipped too." "What! the whole army, sir?" "That's more than I know. They may stay that like. I know I'm going home. I've had enough of fighting to last my lifetime.""

"Yes, a musical entitled The Train has for its theme that notorious contraceptive train which ran from Belfast to Dublin in 1971 and is to open next week in Dublin. I participated in that original stunt, but I have declined any further connection with the performance in question and chosen not to appear on any radio or television programme associated with it. I do not endorse Rough Magic's enterprise in turning this episode into a musical, because, for me, it is not the way to explain the historical context of birth control in Ireland - and elsewhere. I also feel that an experience which belongs to my life has been stolen. It is for me to tell my story, at least while I am alive, not others."

"[On the "contraceptive train" episode] I knew that this was something which had to be done, because it would make a point dramatically, sensationally, even historically. I was also wretched about doing it. I knew how upset my mother would be – how mortified to see her daughter in the headlines, even identified as a ringleader, in a stunt which involved buying French letters in Belfast."

"The Bhagavad Gita is one of the noblest scriptures of India, one of the deepest scriptures of the world ... a symbolic scripture, with many meanings, containing many truths .... [that] forms the living heart of the Eastern wisdom."

"The "rush to the town" is known to be one of the signs of racial ruin. It foreran the fall of Rome and of other great powers of the past. Peasant nations may be subjected, but they outlive their oppressors; for in them the family, which is the living cell of the nation, has a direct source of life in the land on which it lives, and States and empires might go into anarchy, yet the peasant community would survive. A wide view of history shows that humanity flourishes when the town is the adminicle of a rural society, the centre in which it has craftsmen to make its tools, merchants to exchange its wares, and colleges to educate its people. When the balance tilts, and the town becomes the main and normal dwelling place of the race, with the countryside merely its vegetable garden—when, so to speak, man goes indoors to live and gives up the open-air—then decay begins and doom, within a few generations, is certain."

"It was an astounding discovery that Hindustan possessed, in spite of the changes of realms and chances of time, a language of umivalled richness and variety; a language, the parent of all those dialects that Europe has fondly called classical- the source alike of Greek flexibility and Roman strength. A philosophy, compared with which, in point of age, the lessons of Pythagoras are but of yesterday, and in point of daring speculation Plato's boldest efforts are tame and commonplace. Poetry more purelyintellectual than any of those, which we had before any conception; and systems of science whose antiquity baffled all power of astronomical calculation. This literature, with all its colossal proportions, which can scarcely be described without the semblance of bombast and exaggeration claimed of course a place for itself - it stood alone, and it was able to stand alone." "To acquire the mastery of this language is almost the labor of life; its literature seems exhaustless. The utmost stretch of imaginatlOn can scarcely comprehend its boundless mythology. Its philosophy has touched upon every metaphysical difficulty; its legislation is as varied as the castes for which it was designed."

"It’s horrific...famines are pretty uncommon... famine like this, as big as this, this is very uncommon... it’s entirely man made... the news of it isn’t being reported... The economy’s being destroyed... food that is available is too expensive for much of the population. ...bombing started in the spring of 2015... led by Saudi Arabia, and particularly was the initiative of the Crown Prince, but at that stage he was defense minister, Mohammed bin Salman, who has become so notorious since because of the Khashoggi murder... Originally... apparently they thought it would take a few weeks. By the end of 2016... they appear to have become more and more frustrated. So they had started [attacking] infrastructure, food production, food storage... 220 fishing boats on the Red Sea... destroyed. The fish catch is down by 50 percent... means a lot for people who are already on the age of starvation. And the attack on the economic infrastructure... All the evidence is that there is a very deliberate economic war going on, directed at the Yemenis... So all these things are coming together with this intensifying of the military war, and heavy civilian casualties, and the worsening famine in all parts of the country."

"He has been accused of shifting the agenda from the two-state solution to promising the annexation of Israeli settlements on the West Bank during the present election campaign. But the so-called two-state solution was always something of a charade enabling foreign diplomats to pretend that there was a “peace process” that was dead and buried. Likewise, moving the US embassy to Jerusalem and the US recognition of the Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights do not really change a balance of power that is wholly in Israel’s favour... On the other hand, the Palestinians will still be there in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank; Israel never achieves a final victory. Netanyahu has done nothing to change this – but then neither did previous Israeli leaders, whatever they claimed they were doing."

"The real purpose of state secrecy is to enable governments to establish their own self-interested and often mendacious version of the truth by the careful selection of “facts” to be passed on to the public. They feel enraged by any revelation of what they really know, or by any alternative source of information. Such threats to their control of the news agenda must be suppressed where possible and, where not, those responsible must be pursued and punished. Revealing important information about the Yemen war – in which at least 70,000 people have been killed – is the reason why the US government is persecuting both Assange and Zikry."

"I was in Kabul a decade ago when WikiLeaks released a massive tranche of US government documents about the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen. On the day of the release, I was arranging by phone to meet an American official... He was intensely interested and asked me what was known about the degree of classification of the files. When I told him, he said in a relieved tone: “No real secrets, then.” ...I asked him why he was so dismissive of the revelations that were causing such uproar in the world. He explained that the US government was not so naive that it did not realise that making these documents available to such a wide range of civilian and military officials meant that they were likely to leak. Any information really damaging to US security had been weeded out... he said: “We are not going to learn the biggest secrets from WikiLeaks because these have already been leaked by the White House, Pentagon or State Department.” ...However, it was the friendly US official and I who were being naive, forgetting that the real purpose of state secrecy is to enable governments to establish their own self-interested and often mendacious version of the truth by the careful selection of “facts” to be passed on to the public. They feel enraged by any revelation of what they really know, or by any alternative source of information. Such threats to their control of the news agenda must be suppressed where possible and, where not, those responsible must be pursued and punished."

"It is unlikely that Iran is involved – but the unpredictability of US and Saudi foreign policy has exacerbated the danger of military action... Saudi Arabia’s claim that two of its oil tankers have been sabotaged off the coast of the UAE is vague in detail – but could create a crisis that spins out of control and into military action... Although the US is militarily superior to Iran by a wide margin, the Iranians as a last resort could fire rockets or otherwise attack Saudi and UAE oil facilities. Such apocalyptic events are unlikely – but powerful figures in Washington, such as the national security adviser John Bolton and secretary of state Mike Pompeo, appear prepared to take the risk of a war breaking out... Bolton and Pompeo are reported to have used some mortar rounds landing near the US embassy in Baghdad in February as an excuse to get a reluctant Pentagon to prepare a list of military options against Iran... the US and Saudi Arabia have been talking up war against Iran just as economic sanctions are seriously biting. Iranian oil exports have dropped from 2.8 to 1.3 million barrels a day... Promises by the EU, UK, France and Germany to enable the Islamic republic to avoid sanctions on its oil trade and banking have not been fulfilled. Commercial enterprises are too frightened of being targeted by the US treasury to risk breaching sanctions."