Flann O'Brien quotes

Flann O'Brien was an Irish writer and satirist, renowned for his inventive and humorous novels. His works, including "At Swim-Two-Birds" and "The Third Policeman," combined elements of surrealism, absurdity, and sharp wit. He remains a celebrated figure in both Irish literature and postmodern fiction. Here are 32 of his quotes:

A wise old owl once lived in a wood, the more he heard the less he said, the less he said the more he heard, let's emulate that wise old bird.

Flann O'Brien

Anybody who has the courage to raise his eyes and look sanely at the awful human condition ... must realize finally that tiny periods of temporary release from intolerable suffering is the most that any individual has the right to expect.

Flann O'Brien

When things go wrong and will not come right, Though you do the best you can, When life looks black as the hour of night, A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.

Flann O'Brien

The gross and net result of it is that people who spend most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who nearly are half people and half bicycles.

Flann O'Brien

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

Flann O'Brien

What you think is the point is not the point at all but only the beginning of the sharpness.

Flann O'Brien

Waiting for the German verb is surely the ultimate thrill.

Flann O'Brien

When money's tight and is hard to get And your horse has also ran, When all you have is a heap of debt A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.

Flann O'Brien

Strange enlightenments are vouchsafed to those who seek the higher places.

Flann O'Brien

I saw that my witticism was unperceived and quietly replaced it in the treasury of my mind.

Flann O'Brien

Your talk," I said, "is surely the handiwork of wisdom because not one word of it do I understand.

Flann O'Brien

I am completely half afraid to think.

Flann O'Brien

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

Flann O'Brien

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

Flann O'Brien

Descartes spent far too much time in bed subject to the persistent hallucination that he was thinking. You are not free from a similar disorder.

Flann O'Brien

It is clear enough that you are making some distinction in what you said, that there is some nicety of terminology in your words. I can't quite follow you.

Flann O'Brien

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?

Flann O'Brien

You told me what the first rule of wisdom is," I said. "What is the second rule?" "That can be answered," he said. "There are five in all. Always ask any questions that are to be asked and never answer any. Turn everything you hear to your own advantage. Always carry a repair outfit. Take left turns as much as possible. Never apply your front brake first...If you follow them," said the Sergeant, "you will save your soul and you will never get a fall on a slippy road.

Flann O'Brien

Is it life? I would rather be without it, for there is quare small utility in it. You cannot eat it or drink it or smoke it in your pipe, it does not keep the rain out and it is a poor armful in the dark if you strip it and take it to bed with you after a night's porter when you are shivering with the red passion. It is a great mistake and a thing better done without, like bed jars and foreign bacon. Many a man has spent a hundred years trying to get the dimensions of it and when he understands it at last and entertains the certain pattern of it in his head, be the hokey he takes to his bed and dies. He dies like a poisoned sheepdog. There is nothing so dangerous you can't smoke it, nobody will give you tuppence halfpenny for the half of it, and it kills you in the wind-up. It is a quare contraption, very dangerous, a certain death-trap.

Flann O'Brien

Some savage faculty for observation told him that most respectable and estimable people usually had a lot of books in their houses.

Flann O'Brien

It cannot be too often repeated that I am not for sale. I was bought in 1921 and the transaction was final and conclusive.

Flann O'Brien

If Irish were to die completely, the standard of English here, both in the spoken and written word, would sink to a level probably as low as that obtaining in England and it would stop there only because it could go no lower.

Flann O'Brien