Home > Author > Flann O'Brien
21 " I am, as you know, an Irish person and yield to gnomon in my admiration and respect for the old land. "
― Flann O'Brien
22 " Your talk," I said, "is surely the handiwork of wisdom because not one word of it do I understand. "
― Flann O'Brien , The Third Policeman
23 " I saw that my witticism was unperceived and quietly replaced it in the treasury of my mind. "
― Flann O'Brien , At Swim-Two-Birds
24 " The gross and net result of it is that people who spent 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 are nearly half people and half bicycles...when a man lets things go so far that he is more than half a bicycle, you will not see him so much because he spends a lot of his time leaning with one elbow on walls or standing propped by one foot at kerbstones. "
25 " 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. "
26 " What you think is the point is not the point at all but only the beginning of the sharpness. "
27 " I am completely half afraid to think. "
28 " Hell goes round and round. In shape it is circular, and by nature it is interminable, repetitive, and nearly unbearable. "
29 " When a man sleeps, he is steeped and lost in a limp toneless happiness: awake he is restless, tortured by his body and the illusion of existence. Why have men spent the centuries seeking to overcome the awakened body? Put it to sleep, that is a better way. Let it serve only to turn the sleeping soul over, to change the blood-stream and thus make possible a deeper and more refined sleep. "
30 " 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 , The Dalkey Archive
31 " Strange enlightenments are vouchsafed to those who seek the higher places. "
32 " Is it life?" he answered, "I would rather be without it," he said, "for there is queer 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 of 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. "
33 " 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. "
34 " 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. "
35 " When money's tight and is hard to getAnd your horse has also ran,When all you have is a heap of debtA PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN. "
36 " Answers do not matter so much as questions, said the Good Fairy. A good question is very hard to answer. The better the question the harder the answer. There is no answer at all to a very good question. "
37 " Questions are like the knocks of beggarmen, and should not be minded. "
38 " 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. "
39 " Never before had I believed or suspected that I had a soul but just then I knew I had. I knew also that my soul was friendly, was my senior in years and was solely concerned for my own welfare. For convenience I called him Joe. I felt a little reassured to know that I was not altogether alone. Joe was helping me. "
40 " 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. "