REFLECTIONS

Morning, a time for fortitude to face the day, a time for resilience, to begin again and again, a time of happiness, a time for hope.

SR STANISLAUS KENNEDY

I feel more and more the time wasted that is not spent in Ireland.

LADY GREGORY

May the roof above us never fall in. And may the friends gathered below it never fall out.

IRISH BLESSING

The more miserable I tell people I am, the funnier it is. There’s nothing as funny as unhappiness – there really isn’t. What makes it different, I suppose, is that somewhere in the comedy there are reflections of a more philosophical nature.

MICHAEL HARDING

The play was a great success but the audience was a disaster.

OSCAR WILDE

One of the very best rules of conversation is to never say anything which any of the company wish had been left unsaid.

JONATHAN SWIFT I’ve had heartbreak. I know what it is to fail and I know how hard it is to pick yourself back up after that. This is why I am who I am, and why I am here today, because I’m not afraid of failure.

KELLIE HARRINGTON

People ask me to smile for the camera, but somehow it always comes out gloomy.

STEPHEN REA

I was the big, bossy older sister, full of enthusiasms, mad fantasies, desperate urges to be famous, and anxious to be a saint – a settled sort of saint, not one who might have to suffer or die for her faith.

MAEVE BINCHY

Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH

I thought how wonderful life is even when everything is thrown at you. It is what you do with it and who you spend it with that matters and I was spending it with the people who matter most to me. And I hoped that [my godchild] would grow up accepting that life is difficult, but it is worth living and celebrating, every day, right to the end.

VICKY PHELAN If we want to reap the harvest of peace and justice in the future, we will have to sow seeds of nonviolence, here and now, in the present.

MAIREAD CORRIGAN MAGUIRE

I never thought in terms of being a leader. I thought very simply in terms of helping people.

JOHN HUME

Practise things you’re good at. Keep on top of things you’re not so good at, but be world-class at your best. Never think, ‘I’m very good at this and that, I can leave those for a bit.

BRIAN O’DRISCOLL

I often sit back and think, I wish I’d done that, and find out later that I already have.

RICHARD HARRIS

How quietly the great God does all his mighty works! Darkness is spread over us, and light breaks in again, and there is no noise of drawing curtains or closing shutters.

CATHERINE MCAULEY