James Allen

People are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves. That is why they remain bound.

Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass.

We had the sky up there, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss whether they was made or just happened.

I went to the Bach Choir concert and heard Mozart’s Requiem. I did not rise warmly to it. Then I heard an extract from Parsifal which I disliked very much. If Bach wriggles, Wagner writhes…

Work and thou canst escape the reward; whether the work be fine or course, planting corn or writing epics, so only it be honest work, done to thine own approbation, it shall earn a reward to the senses as well as to the thought.

There is this to be said in favor of drinking, that it takes the drunkard first out of society, then out of the world.

The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast; but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it.

If you have good thoughts, they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.

A minute of thought is greater than an hour of talk.

The trouble with the world is not that people know too little, but that they know so many things that ain’t so.

The man who is ostentatious of his modesty is twin to the statue that wears a fig-leaf.

There are still many causes worth sacrificing for, so much history yet to be made.

Just write every day of your life. Read intensely. Then see what happens. Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers.

New ideas come into this world somewhat like falling meteors, with a flash and an explosion, and perhaps somebody

I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way: by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could.

Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it!