Quotes from Sean O'Casey

The military mind is indeed a menace. Old-fashioned futurity that sees only men fighting and dying in smoke and fire; hears nothing more civilized than a cannonade; scents nothing but the stink of battle-wounds and blood.

The worlds a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.

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.

Laughter is wine for the soul - laughter soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with seriousness - 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.

It's I who know that well: when it was dark, you always carried the sun in your hand for me.

The whole world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.

All the world's a stage, and most of us are desperately under-rehearsed.

A few hundhred scrawls o' chaps with a couple o' guns and Rosary beads, again' a hundhred thousand thrained men with horse, fut an' artillery… an' he wants us to fight fair!

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

Politics — I don't know why, but they seem to have a tendency to separate us, to keep us from one another, while nature is always and ever making efforts to bring us together.

One minute with him is all I ask; one minute alone with him, while you're runnin' for th' priest an' th' doctor.

The whole worl's in a state o' chassis.

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.

Politics - I don't know why, but they seem to have a tendency to separate us, to keep us from one another, while nature is always and ever making efforts to bring us together.

You cannot put a rope around the neck of an idea: you cannot put an idea up against a barrack-square wall and riddle it with bullets: you cannot confine it in the strongest prison cell that your slaves could ever build.

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.

Money does not make you happy but it quiets the nerves.

Work! labor the asparagus me of life; the one great sacrament of humanity from which all other things flow - security, leisure, joy, art, literature, even divinity itself.

When I stepped from hard manual work to writing, I just stepped from one kind of hard work to another.

There is none to tell the rich to go on striving, for a rich man makes the law that hallows and hollows his own life.

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

There's nothing so passionate as a vested interest disguised as an intellectual conviction.

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