I’m addicted to books of wit and wisdom so I pounced on this little gem, created and produced by Teapot Press Ltd, and published in 2016
It is quite unusual in that it draws together quotes and Irish sayings and proverbs on a wide range of topics and also has short biographies and quotes from ten famous Irish people: Brendan Behan, George Bernard Shaw, James Joyce, Jonathan Swift, Lady Augusta Gregory, Oliver Goldsmith, Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett, Sean O’Casey and William Butler Yeats.
Here’s a few of the quotes that have I’ve loved:
Words are the clothes thoughts wear. ( Samuel Beckett)
Laughter is wine for the soul – laughter soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with seriousness. Comedy and tragedy step through life together, arm in arm, all along, out along, down along lea. A laugh is a great natural stimulator, a pushful entry into life; and once we can laugh, we can live. It is the hilarious declaration made by man that life is worth living. ( Sean O’ Casey)
You cannot put a rope around the neck of an idea; you cannot put an idea up against the barrack -square wall and riddle it with bullets; you cannot confine it in the strongest prison cell your slaves could ever build. (Sean O’Casey)
The truth is rarely pure, and never simple. ( Oscar Wilde)
The way most people fail is in not keeping up the heart. (Lady Augusta Gregory)
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. (William Butler Yeats)
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh. (George Bernard Shaw)
If you love her in rags, your love will last. (Irish Proverb)
Money does not make you happy but it quiets the nerves. (Samuel Beckett)
This is definitely a book for anyone with a drop of Irish blood in them or an interest in getting a feel for how we Irish carry on!