Top 15 J. P. Donleavy Quotes

Bash on regardless. That is the cry dear chap. Through the funerals of friends. Trampling the rose gardens of enemies. Bash on regardless.

To a blonde tweedy lady I had to administer a few I beg your pardons before she would await her turn. When a red nosed tinkerish looking Jarvey with a rather scrawny mare pulled up. In my most gentlemanly fashion I ushered these three older country people just behind to proceed ahead of me. But they nodded in eight directions and looked up at the sky in four more as if asking every saint in heaven for assistance and then urged me with their country voices to take the horsecab.
"Ah, it's soon enough later for the likes of us."

But damn it all, aren't we just as some great playwright or someone said, actors on a stage.

My god, one can see such a different side of people when one's merely a menial.
O God what utter amazing ruddy bliss to no longer be a menial.

Of the eighty thousand things that came all at once into my mind to say, I selected the one hundred and twelfth.

Love and affection calms the horse. Provided you can administer these before you are bitten, trampled or kicked to death. Meanwhile step back out of harm's way. Murmur quiet peaceful words. There, there now. Easy there. Quietly now. Good old fellow.

"Why don't you shut up. You thief."
Amazing how few words one has to use to gain one's desired effect.

Even if everybody suffers, your own suffering does not seem less.

Foxy said it was always good to use the word fucking in your threats. Then they always fucking well knew.
That you
Fucking well
Meant it

But like the end of every rainbow I ran to with my sisters, all I ever found was misty rain drops.

Darcy Dancer crossing the frosty cobbles of the farmyard. Snorts and stampings in the stables. The whinnies of Molly and Petunia. Who smell me near. Luke mucking out. Forking up the big brown lumps of dung matted with yellow straw and shovelling it into his barrow. At least someone is working. But I suppose I shall have to spout a few hackneyed words to pass the time of day.
"Good morning to you sir. It's grand to see you up and about."
"Thank you Luke. It's a chilly draughty old morning."
"'Tis that sir."
"Gives one a mind to thank god for inventing fire."
"Ah now you've said it, sir. On these winter days you need the little bit of hell the Lord puts flaming in a grate."

"I think I am at a cross roads. And which way I turn may indeed be the direction of my whole destiny."
"Ah you are far too young to speak so. Life it comes. Bang. It knocks you a little this way. Bang. It knock you a little bit the other way. And the direction you go. Well you are lucky if it is not backwards."
"Or bang, it could madam, flatten one altogether."
"Yes, it does do that too. But then we must get up again."

There is but one thing that is important, that no one can ever take your good manners from you.

Tongues never still. Wagging and wagging. In one shopkeeper's ear and out to a dozen others. And in a thrice don't they have the whole story all over Ireland.

Ah, I'm getting on now. There are not many years left me. Sure what do they do with old butlers but shed them. Like a dog's winter hairs in summer. And send them with their tray into the grave. And they don't know the good servant's gone till they're sitting in all their splendour waiting in the drawing room. Wondering what's holding up the refreshment after dingling the bell down the kitchen hall. And if it's me they're calling I'd be coming only that I'm gone. And with luck be up there serving God instead.