“But real adventures, I reflected, do not happen to people who remain at home: they must be sought abroad.”

“All seemed weary of life even before entering upon it.”

“Sleep, where in the waste is the wisdom?”

“Ah, poor dogsbody! Here lies poor dogsbody's body.”

“There's no friends like the old friends”

“One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.”

“i know by heart the places he likes to saale, delvan first and duvlin after, by dredgerous lands and devious delts”

“They listened feeling that flow endearing flow over skin limbs human heart soul spine.”

He wished that a tale of a deed should be told of a deed not by him should by him not be told.”

“Dust webbed the window and the showtrays. Dust darkened the toiling fingers with their vulture nails. Dust slept on dull coils of bronze and silver, lozenges of cinnabar, on rubies, leprous and winedark stones.”

“First you must take your degree. Set that before you as your first aim. Then, little by little, you will see your way. I mean in every sense, your way in life and in thinking.”

“Lips kissed, kissing kissed.”

“In the wide land under a tender lucid evening sky, a cloud drifting westward amid a pale green sea of heaven, they stood together, children that had erred.”

“Reproduction is the beginning of death.”

“He would fade into something impalpable under her eyes and then in a moment he would be transfigured. Weakness and timidity and inexperience would fall from him in that magic moment.”

“His heart danced upon her movements like a cork on the tide.”

“The shortest way to Tara is via Holyhead”

“obedience in the womb, chastity in the tomb but involuntary poverty all his days.”

“I will not say nothing. I will defend my church and my religion when it is insulted and spit on.”

“He laughed to free his mind from his minds bondage.”

“I seriously believe that you will retard the course of civilisation in Ireland by preventing the Irish people from having one good look at themselves in my nicely polished looking glass.”

“She said he just looked as if he was asleep, he looked that peaceful and resigned. No one would think he'd make such a beautiful corpse.”

“however, he brought to mind instances of cultured fellows that promised so brilliantly nipped in the bud of premature decay and nobody to blame but themselves.”

“I wish you and yours every joy in life, old chap, and tons of money, and may you never die till I shoot you.”