John Boyle O'Reilly Quotes

The adoption of gloves for all contests will do more to preserve the practice of boxing than any other conceivable means. It will give pugilism new life, not only as a professional boxer's art, but as a general exercise.

Anonymity is the fame of the future.

Ireland is a fruitful mother of genius, but a barren nurse.

I'd rather live in Bohemia than in any other land.

A dreamer lives forever, And a toiler dies in a day.

The organized charity, scrimped and iced, In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ.

Woman suffrage is an unjust, unreasonable, unspiritual abnormality. It is a hard, undigested, tasteless, devitalized proposition. It is a half-fledged, unmusical, Promethean abomination. It is a quack bolus to reduce masculinity even by the obliteration of femininity.

They who see the Flying Dutchman never, never reach the shore.

Be silent and safe-silence never betrays you.

The wealth of mankind is the wisdom they leave.

It is heroic to prepare for war with a tyrant power. Patriots will always win the admiration of mankind for daring to meet the bloodshed of battle for their country's liberty. But the patriot who is willing to go to that sacrifice will be the first to condemn the aimless and secret shedding of blood in time of peace.

Loyalty is the greatest quality of the human heart.

The right word fitly spoken is a precious rarity.

For all time to come, the freedom and purity of the press are the test of national virtue and independence. No writer for the press, however humble, is free from the burden of keeping his purpose high and his integrity white.

Well blest is he who has a dear one dead; A friend he has whose face will never change- A dear communion that will not grow strange; The anchor of a love is death.

... every man on the planet Has just as much right as yourself to the road.

Putting prize-fighting altogether aside as one of the unavoidable evils attending on this manly exercise, the inestimable value of boxing as a training, discipline, and development of boys and young men remains.

Prize-Fighting is not the aim of boxing. This noble exercise ought not to be judged by the dishonesty or the low lives of too many of its professional followers. Let it stand alone, an athletic practice, on the same footing as boating or football.

Who heeds not experience, trust him not.

The Greeks were the first boxers. Pugilism appears to have been one of the earliest distinctions in play and exercise that appeared between the Hellenes and their Asiatic fathers. The unarmed personal encounter was indicative of a sturdier manhood.

All that is worth seeing in good boxing can best be witnessed in a contest with soft gloves. Every value is called out: quickness, force, precision, foresight, readiness, pluck, and endurance. With these, the rowdy and 'rough' are not satisfied.

And we who have toiled for freedom's law, have we sought for freedom's soul? Have we learned at last that human right is not a part but the whole?

How shall I a habit break? As you did that habit make, As you gathered, you must lose; As you yielded, now refuse, Thread by thread the strands we twist Till they bind us neck and wrist, Thread by thread the patient hand Must untwine ere free we stan

Put least trust in him who is foremost to praise you, nor judge of a road till it draw to the end.