John Boyle O'Reilly Quotes

21 Sourced Quotes

For all time to come, the freedom and purity of the press are the test of national virtue and independence. No writer for the press, however humble, is free from the burden of keeping his purpose high and his integrity white.

John Boyle O'Reilly
For the love that is purest and sweetest
Has a kiss of desire on the lips.

John Boyle O'Reilly
I'd rather live in Bohemia than in any other land.

John Boyle O'Reilly
Though it lash the shallows that line the beach,
Afar from the great sea-deeps,
There is never a storm whose might can reach
Where the vast leviathan sleeps.
Like a mighty thought in a mighty mind
In the clear cold depths he swims;
Whilst above him the pettiest form of his kind
With a dash o'er the surface skims.

John Boyle O'Reilly
Woman suffrage is an unjust, unreasonable, unspiritual abnormality. It is a hard, undigested, tasteless, devitalized proposition. It is a half-fledged, unmusical, Promethean abomination. It is a quack bolus to reduce masculinity even by the obliteration of femininity.

John Boyle O'Reilly
The adoption of gloves for all contests will do more to preserve the practice of boxing than any other conceivable means. It will give pugilism new life, not only as a professional boxer's art, but as a general exercise.

John Boyle O'Reilly
Prize-Fighting is not the aim of boxing. This noble exercise ought not to be judged by the dishonesty or the low lives of too many of its professional followers. Let it stand alone, an athletic practice, on the same footing as boating or football.

John Boyle O'Reilly
Every man on the planet Has just as much right as yourself to the road.

John Boyle O'Reilly
Well blest is he who has a dear one dead; A friend he has whose face will never change- A dear communion that will not grow strange; The anchor of a love is death.

John Boyle O'Reilly
The Greeks were the first boxers. Pugilism appears to have been one of the earliest distinctions in play and exercise that appeared between the Hellenes and their Asiatic fathers. The unarmed personal encounter was indicative of a sturdier manhood.

John Boyle O'Reilly
Putting prize-fighting altogether aside as one of the unavoidable evils attending on this manly exercise, the inestimable value of boxing as a training, discipline, and development of boys and young men remains.

John Boyle O'Reilly
The red rose whispers of passion,
And the white rose breathes of love;
O, the red rose is a falcon,
And the white rose is a dove.

John Boyle O'Reilly
You gave me the key of your heart, my love;
Then why did you make me knock?
Oh that was yesterday, saints above!
And last night—I changed the lock!

John Boyle O'Reilly
Too late we learn, a man must hold his friend
Unjudged, accepted, trusted to the end.

John Boyle O'Reilly
When honor comes to you, be ready to take it; But reach not to seize it before it is near.

John Boyle O'Reilly
How shall I a habit break?
As you did that habit make.
As you gathered, you must lose;
As you yielded, now refuse.
Thread by thread the strands we twist
Till they bind us, neck and wrist.
Thread by thread the patient hand
Must untwine, ere free we stand.
As we builded, stone by stoene,
We must toil, unhelped, alone,
Till the wall is overthrown.

John Boyle O'Reilly
The world is large when weary leagues two loving hearts divide
But the world is small when your enemy is loose on the other side.

John Boyle O'Reilly
The organized charity, scrimped and iced, In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ.

John Boyle O'Reilly
They who see the Flying Dutchman never, never reach the shore.

John Boyle O'Reilly
For peace do not hope; to be just you must break it. Still work for the minute and not for the year.

John Boyle O'Reilly
Our life a harp is, with unnumbered strings, And tones and symphonies; but our poor skill Some shallow notes from its great music brings.

John Boyle O'Reilly