When I came back to Dublin I was court marshaled in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence
—Brendan Behan
Topics: Absence
Other people’s interruptions of your work are relatively insignificant compared with the countless times you interrupt yourself.
—Brendan Behan
Topics: Focus, Concentration
At the innermost core of all loneliness is a deep and powerful yearning for union with one’s lost self.
—Brendan Behan
Topics: Loneliness
If you greatly desire something, have the guts to stake everything on obtaining it.
—Brendan Behan
Topics: Desire
True, you can’t take it with you, but then, that’s not the place where it comes in handy.
—Brendan Behan
Topics: Death
Some persons are very decisive when it comes to avoiding decisions.
—Brendan Behan
Topics: Decisions, Decision
No yesterdays are ever wasted for those who give themselves to today.
—Brendan Behan
Topics: Moving on, Past and Present, Reflection, Live-now
The best way to escape from a problem is to solve it.
—Brendan Behan
Topics: Problems, Problem-solving
Inspirations never go in for long engagements; they demand immediate marriage to action.
—Brendan Behan
Topics: Procrastination, Getting Going, Inaction, Action
God forgive us—but most of us grew up to be the sort of men our mothers warned us against.
—Brendan Behan
Topics: Motherhood
Failure at a task may be the result of having tackled it at the wrong time.
—Brendan Behan
Topics: Failures, Mistakes
Many of our fears are tissue-paper-thin, and a single courageous step would carry us clear through them.
—Brendan Behan
Topics: Fear, Anxiety, Courage
Most people perform essentially meaningless work. When they retire that truth is borne upon them.
—Brendan Behan
Topics: Retirement
People who ask our advice almost never take it. Yet we should never refuse to give it, upon request, for it often helps us to see our own way more clearly
—Brendan Behan
Topics: Advice
Nothing hurts more than the friendly letter that one never got around to writing.
—Brendan Behan
Topics: Friendship
I am a daylight atheist.
—Brendan Behan
Topics: Atheism
If you have a talent, use it in every which way possible. Don’t hoard it. Don’t dole it out like a miser. Spend it lavishly like a millionaire intent on going broke.
—Brendan Behan
There’s no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.
—Brendan Behan
One drink is too many for me and a thousand not enough.
—Brendan Behan
Topics: Alcohol, Alcoholism
A baseball park is the one place where a man’s wife doesn’t mind his getting excited over somebody else’s curves
—Brendan Behan
Topics: Baseball
Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.
—Brendan Behan
Topics: Acceptance
Men will always delight in a woman whose voice is lined with velvet.
—Brendan Behan
Topics: Women
A man is fortunate if he encounters living examples of vice, as well as of virtue, to inspire him.
—Brendan Behan
Topics: Role models, Mistakes, Failures
The prospect of success in achieving our most cherished dream is not without its terrors. Who is more deprived and alone than the man who has achieved his dream?
—Brendan Behan
Topics: Success, Success & Failure, Success is not everything, Accomplishment
A man is already halfway in love with any woman who listens to him.
—Brendan Behan
Topics: Listening
All publicity is good, except an obituary notice.
—Brendan Behan
No man can discover his own talents.
—Brendan Behan
Topics: Talent
Every man, through fear, mugs his aspirations a dozen times a day.
—Brendan Behan
Topics: Fear, The Future, Tomorrow, Anxiety, Aspirations
Scream at God if that’s the only thing that will get results.
—Brendan Behan
Topics: Prayer
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Oscar Wilde Irish Poet, Playwright
- William Butler Yeats Irish Poet
- Oliver Goldsmith Anglo-Irish Novelist, Poet
- James Joyce Irish Novelist
- Elizabeth Bowen Irish Novelist
- Sheridan Le Fanu Irish Novelist
- George William Russell Irish Author
- Jonathan Swift Irish Satirist
- George Bernard Shaw Irish Playwright
- Laurence Sterne Irish Anglican Novelist
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