George A. Moore

Dublin dwindles so beautifully; there is no harsh separation between it and the country. It fades away, whereas London seems to devour the country; an army of buildings come and take away a beautiful park, and you never seem to get quite out of sight of a row of houses.

Remorse: beholding heaven and feeling hell.

You will find in me a middle aged man with a career behind me sufficiently brilliant to enable me to talk about many things interestingly; and I am not an unkindly soul, I believe.

The truth is that I am in love with Dublin. I think it is the most beautiful town that I have ever seen, mountains at the back and the sea in front, and long roads winding through decaying suburbs and beautiful woods.

To what better purpose can a man's energy be devoted, and his talents, than the resuscitation of his country's language?

The difficulty in life is the choice.

Taking something from one man and making it worse is plagiarism.

Reality can destroy the dream; why shouldn't the dream destroy reality?

Some men spend their lives watching bees and ants, noting down the habits of these insects; my pleasure is to watch the human mind, noting how unselfish instincts rise to the surface and sink back again, making way for selfish instincts, each equally necessary, for the world would perish were it to become entirely selfish or entirely unselfish.

Isn't it strange that religious prejudices - beliefs none possess, not even the saints, so they have lamented - divide brothers and sons from their fathers. You see, I except mothers and sisters; the female is not a religious animal. If she were, the world would have ceased long ago.

The right I claim is that of every human being to speak what he believes to be the truth to whomever he may meet on his way.

An idea has been running in my head that books lose and gain qualities in the course of time, and I have worried over it a good deal, for what seemed to be a paradox, I felt to be a truth.