The Third Policeman Quotes
"My father understood all dogs thoroughly and treated them like human beings."
"A certain year came about the Christmas-time and when the year was gone my father and mother were gone also."
"Perhaps it is important in the story I am going to tell to remember that it was for de Selby I committed my first serious sin."
"I knew that if my name was to be remembered, it would be remembered with de Selby’s."
"We were friendly and smiled at each other but the situation was a queer one and neither of us liked it."
"No is, generally speaking, a better answer than Yes."
"After a time, I mercifully perceived the error of my ways and the unhappy destination I would reach unless I mended them."
"I therefore decided to say No henceforth to every suggestion, request or inquiry whether inward or outward."
"It was difficult to practise at first and often called for heroism but I persevered and hardly ever broke down completely."
"I have refused more requests and negatived more statements than any man living or dead."
"The system leads to peace and contentment," he said. "People do not trouble to ask you questions if they know the answer is a foregone conclusion."
"I can always get a name," I replied. "Doyle or Spaldman is a good name and so is O’Sweeny and Hardiman and O’Gara. I can take my choice. I am not tied down for life to one word like most people."
"There are four winds and eight sub-winds, each with its own colour... People in the old days had the power of perceiving these colours and could spend a day sitting quietly on a hillside watching the beauty of the winds."
"A person’s colour," he answered slowly, "is the colour of the wind prevailing at his birth."
"Roads he regards as the most ancient of human monuments, surpassing by many tens of centuries the oldest thing of stone that man has reared to mark his passing."
"Without a road to have them looked at from they would have a somewhat aimless if not a futile aspect."
"Human existence de Selby has defined as ‘a succession of static experiences each infinitely brief’."
"His expression when I encountered it was unexpectedly reassuring."
"In that circumstantial eventuality there can be no question of a motor-bicycle."
"Dentists are an unpredictable coterie of people."
"No name or no idea of your originality at all?"
"By the holy Irish-American Powers, by the Dad! Well carry me back to old Kentucky!"
"The first beginnings of wisdom is to ask questions but never to answer any."
"Never in my puff did I hear of any man stealing anything but a bicycle when he was in his sane senses."
"The law is an extremely intricate phenomenon."
"Who ever heard of a man riding a watch down the road or bringing a sack of turf up to his house on the crossbar of a watch?"
"That spear is one of the first things I ever manufactured in my spare time."
"The real point is so thin that maybe it does not exist at all."
"I spent two years manufacturing it when I was a lad, and it still takes me to the fair."
"The only sole correct thing to contain in the chest was another chest of the same make but littler in cubic dimension."
"Number One would hold a million of them at the same time and there would be room left for a pair of woman’s horse-breeches if they were rolled up."
"The vibrations of the true notes are so high in their fine frequencies that they cannot be appreciated by the human earcup."
"Questions are like the knocks of beggarmen, and should not be minded."
"It is lucky for your pop that he is situated in Amurikey."
"Because a man can have more disease and germination in his gob than you’ll find in a rat’s coat."
"The finding of the pump is a fortunate clue that may assist us in our mission of private detection and smart policework."
"The first rule of wisdom is...Always ask any questions that are to be asked and never answer any."
"It crucifies the fork and gives you a blood rush in the head, it is very sore on the internal organs."
"Perseverance is its own reward and necessity is the unmarried mother of invention."
"Everything is composed of small particles of itself and they are flying around in concentric circles and arcs and segments and innumerable other geometrical figures too numerous to mention collectively, never standing still or resting but spinning away and darting hither and thither and back again, all the time on the go."
"They are lively as twenty leprechauns doing a jig on top of a tombstone."
"The half of the people are suffering from it, it is worse than the smallpox."
"Michael Gilhaney," said the Sergeant, "is an example of a man that is nearly banjaxed from the principle of the Atomic Theory. Would it astonish you to hear that he is nearly half a bicycle?"
"You would have bicycles wanting votes and they would get seats on the County Council and make the roads far worse than they are for their own ulterior motivation."
"It is true to say that nothing has happened to you."
"To leave it all without good reason and to smash the little empire into small fragments was a thing too pitiful even to refuse to think about."
"Light is the same omnium on a short wave but if it comes on a longer wave it is in the form of noise, or sound. With my own patents I can stretch a ray out until it becomes sound."
"Omnium is the essential inherent interior essence which is hidden inside the root of the kernel of everything and it is always the same."
"Humanity is an ever-widening spiral and life is the beam that plays briefly on each succeeding ring."
"All humanity from its beginning to its end is already present but the beam has not yet played beyond you."
"I understand you," MacCruiskeen sighed and went again to the dresser, taking something from the drawer.
"I felt as if all my weariness and perplexities of the day had descended on me pleasurably like a great heavy quilt which would keep me warm and sleepy."
"A wide mind is a grand thing, it nearly always leads to farseeing inventions."
"It does a man no harm to move around a bit and see things. It is a great thing for widening out the mind."
"Past humanity is not only implicit in each new man born but is contained in him."
"I thought the scene was so real that much of my fear was groundless."
"The sun was in the neighbourhood also, distributing his enchantment unobtrusively, colouring the sides of things that were unalive and livening the hearts of living things."
"A bird sang a solo from nearby, a cunning blackbird in a dark hedge giving thanks in his native language. I listened and agreed with him completely."
"To save our lifetimes, man. Down there you are as young coming out of a sleep as you are going into it."
"The right is much more tricky than the left, you would be surprised at all the right pitfalls there are."
"A smell is the most complicated phenomenon in the world."
"He wants to get rid of as much as possible, undertime and overtime, as quickly as he can so that he can die as soon as possible."
"The great thing is to keep the beam reading down as low as possible and you are doing very well if the pilot-mark is steady."
"It magnifies to invisibility, It makes everything so big that there is room in the glass for only the smallest particle of it – not enough of it to make it different from any other thing that is dissimilar."
"It is a great thing to do what is necessary before it becomes essential and unavoidable."
"Strange enlightenments are vouchsafed to those who seek the higher places."
"The light that never was on sea or land, the peasant's hope and the poet's dream."
"A big wave in mid-ocean, it is a very lonely and spiritual thing."
"How desirable her seat was, how charming the invitation of her slim encircling handle-arms."
"It was better to stop thinking about the mystery before I was compelled to believe it."
"The whir of the true front wheel in my ear as it spun perfectly beneath my clear eye."
"How can I convey the perfection of my comfort on the bicycle, the completeness of my union with her, the sweet responses she gave me at every particle of her frame?"
"I knew that I liked this bicycle more than I had ever liked any other bicycle, better even than I had liked some people with two legs."
"Feeling that I had been inconsiderate I jumped quickly from the saddle to relieve her."
"No sound or movement answered me as I stood there in the middle of the silence listening to my heart."
"I felt a chill come upon me in this bleak open house."
"At last I summoned all my courage and made up my mind to search the upper storey and finish my business and get back to the bicycle as quickly as possible."
"I felt I was standing within three yards of something unspeakably inhuman and diabolical."
"I stopped thinking, closing up my mind with a snap as if it were a box or a book."
"Certain that I would be assailed by some influence and prevented from reaching the hall door alive, I put my hands down with fists doubled at my sides."
"Something made me turn my head again to the house behind me. The light was still burning peacefully in the same window."
"Sweat was gathering on my brow, my heart was thumping loudly."
"I felt sick at heart but the brief conversation had steadied me."
"I could not decide what was the best thing for me to do."
"Every part of me that was behind me – neck, ears, back, and head – shrank and quailed painfully before the presence confronting them."
"His voice was strangely diffident, almost apologetic."
"The house looked as if it were painted like an advertisement on a board on the roadside, very poorly painted."
"My mind became completely void. I did not recall who I was, where I was, or what my business was upon earth."
"The whole morning and the whole world seemed to have no purpose at all save to frame it and give it some magnitude and position."