J. P. Donleavy's Quotes

When I die I want to decompose in a barrel of porter and have it served in all the pubs in Dublin.

I got disappointed in human nature as well and gave it up because I found it too much like my own.

To marry the Irish is to look for poverty.

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

I observe the physician with the same diligence as the disease.

Pleasure is none, if not diversified.

The day breaks not, it is my heart.

And new Philosophy calls all in doubt, the element of fire is quite put out; the Sun is lost, and the earth, and no mans wit can well direct him where to look for it.

As states subsist in part by keeping their weaknesses from being known, so is it the quiet of families to have their chancery and their parliament within doors, and to compose and determine all emergent differences there.

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.

Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail.

Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.

Humiliation is the beginning of sanctification.

More than kisses, letters mingle souls.

Despair is the damp of hell, as joy is the serenity of heaven.

No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face.

Reason is our soul's left hand, faith her right.

Death be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so. For, those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow. Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

He must pull out his own eyes, and see no creature, before he can say, he sees no God; He must be no man, and quench his reasonable soul, before he can say to himself, there is no God.

Since you would save none of me, I bury some of you.

For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love.

God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice.