The Demi-Gods quotes

“You let me be,” she replied. “If I was doing hurt or harm to you I wouldn’t mind, and if I am fond of the ass itself what does it matter to anybody?”

“It’s this way, that I don’t like to see a woman kissing an ass on the snout, it’s not natural nor proper.”

“A lot you know about natural and proper. Let you leave me alone now; and, besides that, doesn’t the ass like it?”

“And a body might be kissing an ass until the black day of doom and he wouldn’t mind it.”

“One has to be kissing something.”

“Let you kiss me then and get done with it,” said he.

“Mary,” said her father again, “these are decent people, I’m thinking. Let you come from wherever you are, for I’m sure they wouldn’t hurt yourself or myself.”

As swiftly as she had disappeared she reappeared.

“I was looking if the ass was all right,” said she sullenly.

The remarkable thing about astonishment is that it can only last for an instant.

No person can be surprised for more than that time. You will come to terms with a ghost within two minutes of its appearance, and it had scarcely taken that time for Mac Cann and his daughter to become one with the visitors.

It needed alone that the angels should proclaim their quality for the situation to arrange itself naturally.

Man is a scientific creature; he labels his ignorance and shelves it: mystery affrights him, it bores him, but when he has given a name to any appearance then mystery flies away, and reality alone remains for his cogitation.

Later, perhaps, reality will enrage and mystify him more profoundly than any unexpectedness can do.

now the trees and bushes stood apart; they seemed lonely and unguarded in that chill dawning; they seemed like living things which were cold and a little frightened in an immensity to which they were foreign and from which they had much to dread.

Of all unnatural things, if that word can be used in any context, there is none more unnatural than silence, there is none so terrifying;

for silence means more than itself, it means also immobility; it is the symbol and signature of death, and from it no one knows what may come at an instant; for silence is not quietness, it is the enemy of quietness;

For forty-two years he had existed on the edges of a society which did not recognise him in any way, and, as he might himself have put it, he had not done so very badly at all.

He lived as a bird lives, or a fish, or a wolf.

Laws were for other people, but they were not for him;

It is to be remarked that the angels were strangely like Patsy Mac Cann. Their ideas of right and wrong almost entirely coincided with his.

They had no property and so they had no prejudices, for the person who has nothing may look upon the world as his inheritance, while the person who has something has seldom anything but that.

Civilisation, having built itself at hazard upon the Rights of Property, has sought on many occasions to unbuild itself again in sheer desperation of any advance, but from the great Ethic of Possession there never has been any escape, and there never will be until …

if we look with fear that which we behold is frightful; if we look with love then the colours of heaven are repeated to us from the ditch and the dungeon.

We invent eternally upon one another; we scatter our sins broadcast and call them our neighbours; let us scatter our virtues abroad and build us a city to live in.

For Mac Cann and his daughter there was no longer any strangeness in their companions.

Is there actually a wolf in our neighbour?

We see that which we are, and our eyes project on every side an image of ourselves; if we look with fear that which we behold is frightful; if we look with love then the colours of heaven are repeated to us from the ditch and the dungeon.

We invent eternally upon one another; we scatter our sins broadcast and call them our neighbours; let us scatter our virtues abroad and build us a city to live in.

“Did she ever commit adultery with yourself?” said he.

“She did not,” said Patsy, “and that’s why I don’t like her.”

Caeltia considered that statement also, and found it reasonable:

Caeltia considered that statement also, and found it reasonable:

“I think,” said he, “that the reason you don’t like that woman is because you like her too much.”

“It’s so,” said Patsy, “but there is no reason for her taking on with every kind of man and not taking on with me at all.”

He replied, frowning sternly from his wild eyes:

“I wouldn’t hold the grace of God if I saw it slipping from me, so put your hand into my hand and go along your road.”

Eileen Ni Cooley put her hand into his with some awkwardness and turned away her head.

“It was a bit of both, Padraig.”

“The time to get good news,” said Patsy, “is when it’s raining, and that is good news, and it’s raining now.”

“News need not be good or bad, but only news,” she replied, “and we will leave it at that.”

“What will I do with the ass this night?” said Mary.

“Hit him a kick,” said her father.

Thistles make a swishing noise when they are bitten; they have their taste.

Grass does not make any noise at all; it slips dumbly to the sepulchre, and makes no sign.

Bread makes no sound when it is eaten by an ass; it has an interesting taste, and it clings about one’s teeth for a long time.

It sticks out of one’s mouth like whiskers, and you can watch it with your eye while it moves to and fro according as your mouth moves. It is a friendly food, and very good for the hungry.

Oats are not a food; they are a great blessing; they are a debauch; they make you proud, so that you want to kick the front out of a cart, and climb a tree, and bite a cow, and chase chickens.

Mary came running and unyoked him from the cart. She embraced him on the streaming nose. “You poor thing, you!” said she, and she took a large paper bag from the cart and held it to his muzzle.

“Brien O’Brien destroyed himself,” Art continued, “he forfeited his evolution and added treble to his karmic burden because he had not got a sense of humour.”

“No magician has a sense of humour,” remarked Finaun, “he could not be a magician if he had⁠—Humour is the health of the mind.”

“That,” Art broke in, “is one of the things he said to me. So you see he had discovered something. He was very near to being a wise man. He was certainly a courageous man, or, perhaps, foolhardy;

“What’s wrong with you, Padraig?” said she.

“Nothing at all, Eileen, just leave me alone for a minute for I want to talk to the girl.”

“You can count on me for anything, Padraig.”

“Little ass,” quoth I, “how is everything with you?”

“Everything is very well,” said the ass.

“Little ass,” said I, “tell me what you do be thinking of when you fix your eye on vacancy and stare there for a long time?”

Saving for one window the place was entirely dark, and it was towards that window he directed his careful steps.

“It’s better to look at something than at nothing,” quoth he.

He was again on a gravel path, and the stones tried to crunch and wriggle under his feet, but he did not allow that to happen.

The entire section of the walls which he could spy was covered from floor to ceiling with books. There were volumes of every size, every shape, every colour. There were long, narrow books that held themselves like grenadiers at stiff attention.

There were short, fat books that stood solidly like aldermen who were going to make speeches and were ashamed but not frightened.

There were mediocre books bearing themselves with the carelessness of folk who are never looked at and have consequently no shyness. There were solemn books that seemed to be feeling for their spectacles;

There were short, fat books that stood solidly like aldermen who were going to make speeches and were ashamed but not frightened. There were mediocre books bearing themselves with the carelessness of folk who are never looked at and have consequently no shyness.

There were solemn books that seemed to be feeling for their spectacles; and there were tattered, important books that had got dirty because they took snuff, and were tattered because they had been crossed in love and had never married afterwards.

There were prim, ancient tomes that were certainly ashamed of their heroines and utterly unable to obtain a divorce from the hussies;

on him both soap and water had wrought their utmost, and could have no further ambitions; his wristlets gleamed like snow on a tree, and his collar rose upon a black coat as the plumage of a swan emerges spotlessly from water.

His cleanliness was a sight to terrify any tramp, but it only angered Mac Cann, who was not liable to terror of anything but hunger.

“I would like to give you a thump on the head, you dirty dog!” said Patsy, breathing fiercely against the corner of the windowpane, and his use of the adjective was singular as showing in what strange ways extremes can meet.

“I am: I have to: your mother confirms everything that I have charged you with.”

“My mother hates me,” said the woman, “she would confirm anything that was said of me, if it was bad enough.”

“Oh no, she is not! When I ceased to be a child she ceased to be a mother. We are only two women who are so well acquainted that we can be enemies without any shame of each other.”

“You admitted that they were not all lies.”

“Some of the facts were true, all of the colouring was false⁠—they are the things a loving mother says about her daughter! but that is an old story now, or I had fancied so.”

“One forgets the old story until the new story drags it to memory,” said he.

“Some of the facts were true, all of the colouring was false—they are the things a loving mother says about her daughter! but that is an old story now, or I had fancied so.”

“One forgets the old story until the new story drags it to memory,” said he.

She also moved her shoulders slightly.

Again between these people a silence fell which was profound but not quiet.

That soundlessness was tingling with sound; there were screams latent in it; it was atrocious and terrifying.

The man’s hand was pressed against his forehead and his eyes were closed, but what he was looking at was known only to himself in the silence of his being.

“

There is no secrecy in this world or in the others, and there are no tricks: there is Knowledge, but no person can learn more than his head is ready to welcome. That is why robbery is infantile and of no importance.

”

“The stomach has to be filled,” said Caeltia. “

Its filling is a necessity superior to any proprietarial right or disciplinary ethic, and its problem is difficult only for children; it is filled by the air and the wind, the rain and the clay, and the tiny lives that move in the clay.

There is but one property worth stealing; it is never missed by its owners, although every person who has that property offers it to all men from his gentle hands.”

“That’s all I care for the stuff,” said he, and he gripped her arm to prevent her bounding to its recovery.

“Come on, woman dear, and leave the ha’pence alone.”

“There is something I must throw away also, for I am getting too fond of it.”