Flann O'Brien Quotes - Page 2

• Moderation, we find, is an extremely difficult thing to get in this country.

  Flann O'Brien

  Country, Moderation, Difficult

  Flann O’Brien (2016). “Best of Myles (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)”, p.24, HarperCollins UK

  11 Copy quote

• Could Henry Ford produce the Book of Kells? Certainly not. He would quarrel initially with the advisability of such a project and then prove it was impossible.

  Flann O'Brien

  Book, Impossible, Produce

  Flann O'Brien (1985). “Myles away from Dublin: being a selection from the column written for The Nationalist and Leinster times, Carlow, under the name of George Knowall”, Grafton

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Men, Eulogy, Toxic

  11 Copy quote

• 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 three times and scrawled on a photograph of his wife with his dying hand goodbye, goodbye, goodbye

  Flann O'Brien

  Goodbye, Suicidal, Home

  "Myles before Myles: a selection of the earlier writings of Brian O'Nolan".

  4 Copy quote

• 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 drinking and could be always relied upon to make a break of at least twenty-five even with a bad cue.

  Flann O'Brien

  Father, Drinking, Son

  4 Copy quote

• My father...was a man who understood all dogs thoroughly and treated them like human beings.

  Flann O'Brien

  Dog, Father, Men

  "The Third Policeman". Book by Flann O'Brien, 1967.

  16 Copy quote

• Hell goes round and round. In shape it is circular, and by nature it is interminable, repetitive, and nearly unbearable.

  Flann O'Brien

  Shapes, Unbearable, Hell

  Flann O'Brien (2007). “The Complete Novels”, Everyman's Library

  14 Copy quote

• I suppose we all have our recollections of our earlier holidays, all bristling with horror.

  Flann O'Brien

  Humorous, Holiday, Horror

  Flann O'Brien (1985). “Myles away from Dublin: being a selection from the column written for The Nationalist and Leinster times, Carlow, under the name of George Knowall”, Grafton

  7 Copy quote

• Questions are like the knocks of beggarmen, and should not be minded.

  Flann O'Brien

  Should

  Flann O'Brien (1996). “The Third Policeman: A Novel”

  15 Copy quote

• Why be a dumb dud? Do your friends shun you? Do people cross the street when they see you approaching? Do they run up the steps of strange houses, pretend they live there and force their way into the hall while you are passing by? If this is the sort of person you are, you must avail yourself today of this new service. Otherwise, you might as well be dead.

  Flann O'Brien

  Running, Passing By, People

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  Men, Thinking, Errors

  Flann O’Brien (2010). “The Third Policeman (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)”, p.37, HarperCollins UK

  7 Copy quote

• 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 mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. I reflected on the subject of my spare-time literary activities. One Beginning and one ending for a book was a thing I did not agree with. A good book may have three openings entirely dissimilar and inter-related only in the prescience of the author, or for that matter one hundred times as many endings.

  Flann O'Brien

  Book, Eye, Expression

  Flann O'Brien (2000). “At Swim-two-birds”, p.5, Penguin UK

  5 Copy quote

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