Seán O'Casey

I don't believe he was ever dhrunk in his life - sure he's not like a Christian at all!

If England has any dignity left in the way of literature, she will forget for ever the pitiful antics of English Literature's performing flea.

What time has been wasted during man's destiny in the struggle to decide what man's next world will be like! The keener the effort to find out, the less he knew about the present one he lived in. The one lovely world he knew, lived in, that gave him all he had, was, according to preacher and prelate, the one to be least in his thoughts. He was recommended, ordered, from the day of his birth to bid goodbye to it. Oh, we have had enough of the abuse of this fair earth! It is no sad truth that this should be our home. Were it but to give us simple shelter, simple clothing, simple food, adding the lily and the rose, the apple and the pear, it would be a fit home for mortal or immortal man.

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.

When it was dark, you always carried the sun in your hand for me.

I wouldn't be everlasting' cockin' me earth hear every little whisper that was floatin' around me! It's my rule never to lose me temper till it would be dethrimental to keep it.

All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.

SEAMUS: It’s the civilians that suffer, when there’s an ambush they don’t know where to run. Shot in the back to save the British Empire. Shot in the breast to save the soul of Ireland. I believe in the freedom of Ireland and that England has no right to be here, but I draw the line when I hear the gunmen blowing about dying for the people when it’s the people that are dying for the gunmen. With all due respect to the gunmen, I don’t want them to die for me.

That’s the Irish People all over - they treat a serious thing as a joke and a joke as a serious thing.

A man should always be drunk, Minnie, when he talks politics — it's the only way in which to make them important.

It's my rule never to lose my temper till it would be detrimental to keep it.

There's no reason to bring religion into it. I think we ought to have as great a regard for religion as we can, so as to keep it out of as many things as possible.

Isn't all religions curious? If they weren't you wouldn't get anyone to believe them.

There is a deeper life than the life we see and hear with the open ear and the open eye and this is the life important and the life everlasting.

Politics has slain its thousands, but religion has slain its ten thousands.