Quotes from Flann O'Brien

Pon a un ladrón entre hombres honrados y acabarán quitándole el reloj.

When I reached the barrack I paid no attention to anything or anybody but went straight to a bed and lay on it and fell into a full and simple sleep. Compared with this sleep, death is a restive thing, peace is a clamour and darkness a burst of light.

human existence de Selby has defined as 'a succession of static experiences each infinitely brief, a conception which he is thought to have arrived at from examining some old cinematographic films which belonged probably to his nephew

Only serfs or ex-serfs find it necessary to draw up a statement of their 'rights'.

It worries me I may tell you. I sit at home every night thinking about it and smoking endless cigarettes. If you call at my place any night after seven I will show you one of them. Quite circular. Like a hoop.

Recently in mixed company...I ventured to make the claim ( not without some show of humility and modesty ) that I was the greatest living swine.

The heat of the sun played incontrovertibly on every inch of me.

It does a man no harm,' the Sergeant remarked pleasantly, 'to move around a bit and see things. It is a great thing for widening out the mind. A wide mind is a grand thing, it nearly always leads to farseeing inventions.

Dermot Trellis'in akli melekeleri geldiÄŸinde aral?klarla teker teker geldiler, öyle hep birden deÄŸil. Hepsi kendi ?st?raplar?yla geldiler ve sanki her an kalk?p gideceklermiÅŸ gibi akl?n s?n?r?nda endiÅŸeyle durdular.

It does a man no harm to move around a bit and see things. It is a great thing for widening out the mind. A wide mind is a grand thing, it nearly always leads to farseeing inventions.

Descartes spent far too much time in bed subject to the persistent hallucination that he was thinking. You are not free from a similar disorder.

Your talk," I said, "is surely the handiwork of wisdom because not one word of it do I understand.

I saw that my witticism was unperceived and quietly replaced it in the treasury of my mind.

A wise old owl once lived in a wood, the more he heard the less he said, the less he said the more he heard, let's emulate that wise old bird.

I am completely half afraid to think.

What you think is the point is not the point at all but only the beginning of the sharpness.

Hell goes round and round. In shape it is circular, and by nature it is interminable, repetitive, and nearly unbearable.

Strange enlightenments are vouchsafed to those who seek the higher places.

Descartes spent far too much time in bed subject to the persistent hallucination that he was thinking. You are not free from a similar disorder.

When a man sleeps, he is steeped and lost in a limp toneless happiness: awake he is restless, tortured by his body and the illusion of existence. Why have men spent the centuries seeking to overcome the awakened body? Put it to sleep, that is a better way. Let it serve only to turn the sleeping soul over, to change the blood-stream and thus make possible a deeper and more refined sleep.

Moderation, we find, is an extremely difficult thing to get in this country.

Is it life?" he answered, "I would rather be without it," he said, "for there is queer small utility in it. You cannot eat it or drink it or smoke it in your pipe, it does not keep the rain out and it is a poor armful in the dark if you strip it and take it to bed with you after a night of porter when you are shivering with the red passion. It is a great mistake and a thing better done without, like bed-jars and foreign bacon.

When things go wrong and will not come right, Though you do the best you can, When life looks black as the hour of night, A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.

Anybody who has the courage to raise his eyes and look sanely at the awful human condition ... must realize finally that tiny periods of temporary release from intolerable suffering is the most that any individual has the right to expect.