Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.

The real Brahms is nothing more than a sentimental voluptuary. rather tiresomely addicted to dressing himself up as Handel or Beethoven and making a prolonged and intolerable noise.

Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.

I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way: by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could.

Pothinus: "Is it possible that Caesar, the conqueror of the world, has time to occupy himself with such a trifle as our taxes?" Caesar: "My friend, taxes are the chief business of a conqueror of the world.

Don't waste time collecting other people's autographs; rather devote it to making your own autograph worth collecting.

Eternal is the fact that the human creature born in Ireland and brought up in its air is Irish. I have lived for twenty years in Ireland and for seventy-two in England; but the twenty came first and in Britain I am still a foreigner and shall die one.