Brendan Behan Quotes

Quotes about:

• The most important things to do in the world are to get something to eat, something to drink and somebody to love you.

  Brendan Behan

  Love, Life, Important

  Brendan Behan (1968). “The wit of Brendan Behan”

  75 Copy quote

• I have never seen a situation so dismal that a policeman couldn't make it worse.

  Brendan Behan

  War, Situation, Policemen

  50 Copy quote

• I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.

  Brendan Behan

  Summer, Beer, Winter

  "Brendan Behan Dies in Dublin", www.nytimes.com. March 21, 1964.

  50 Copy quote

• They took away our land, our language, and our religion; but they could never harness our tongues.

  Brendan Behan

  Land, Tongue, Language

  46 Copy quote

• The only thing I envy in young people is their livers.

  Brendan Behan

  People, Envy, Young

  27 Copy quote

• It's not that the Irish are cynical. It's rather that they have a wonderful lack of respect for everything and everybody.

  Brendan Behan

  Respect, Cynical, Ireland And The Irish

  "Brendan Behan, Interviews and Recollections". Book by E. H. Mikhail, Vol. 2 (p. 186), 1982.

  58 Copy quote

• I only take a drink on two occasions - when I'm thirsty and when I'm not.

  Brendan Behan

  Drinking, Two, Alcohol

  31 Copy quote

• Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.

  Brendan Behan

  Funny, Editors, Criticism

  "ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER; Breathing Rarefied Air", www.nytimes.com. May 6, 1990.

  19 Copy quote

• The terrorist is the one with the small bomb.

  Brendan Behan

  Peace, War, Novelists

  37 Copy quote

• Many a man has decided to stay alive not because of the will to live but because of the determination not to give assorted surviving bastards the satisfaction of his death.

  Brendan Behan

  Suicide, Determination, Men

  7 Copy quote

• I was court-martialled in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.

  Brendan Behan

  Life, Dublin, Ireland And The Irish

  The Hostage act 1 (1958)

  28 Copy quote

• The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs a lot less.

  Brendan Behan

  Funny, Marriage, Sexy

  "Readers recommend: songs about prostitution" by Peter Kimpton, www.theguardian.com. July 24, 2014.

  15 Copy quote

• Other people have a nationality. The Irish and the Jews have a psychosis.

  Brendan Behan

  Inspirational, Psychosis, People

  Richard's Cork Leg (1961).

  26 Copy quote

• I am a drinker with writing problems.

  Brendan Behan

  Drinking, Writing, Problem

  19 Copy quote

• Whatever you hold in contempt is your jailer.

  Brendan Behan

  Prison, Contempt, Jailer

  15 Copy quote

• Shakespeare said pretty well everything and what he left out, James Joyce, with a judge from meself, put in.

  Brendan Behan

  Umpires, Judging, Said

  11 Copy quote

• If it was raining soup, the Irish would go out with forks.

  Brendan Behan

  Rain, Ireland And The Irish, Soup

  4 Copy quote

• If you accept your limitations you go beyond them.

  Brendan Behan

  Accepting, Ifs, Limitation

  3 Copy quote

• There is no human situation so miserable that it cannot be made worse by the presence of a policeman.

  Brendan Behan

  Miserable, Made, Situation

  2 Copy quote

• The English and Americans dislike only some Irish--the same Irish that the Irish themselves detest, Irish writers--the ones that think.

  Brendan Behan

  Thinking, Irish Writers, Detest

  Brendan Behan (2014). “Behan Complete Plays”, p.280, Bloomsbury Publishing

  23 Copy quote

• I am married to Beatrice Salkeld, a painter. We have no children, except me.

  Brendan Behan

  Children, Married, Painter

  "Happily unblessed" by Rose Shepherd, www.theguardian.com. October 18, 2003.

  13 Copy quote

• Nothing hurts more than the friendly letter that one never got around to writing.

  Brendan Behan

  Friendship, Hurt, Writing

  15 Copy quote

• Every cripple has his own way of walking.

  Brendan Behan

  Way, Cripples, Walking

  Brendan Behan (2014). “The Hostage”, p.86, Bloomsbury Publishing

  15 Copy quote

• I ruined my health drinking to other people's.

  Brendan Behan

  Drinking, People, Ruined

  2 Copy quote

• God forgive us-but most of us grew up to be the sort of men our mothers warned us against.

  Brendan Behan

  Family, Mother, Men

  Quoted in The Wit of Brendan Behan, ed. Sean McCann (1968). In the more famous form, "We are the people our parents warned us about," this appears in Robert Reisner, Graffiti (1967).

  2 Copy quote

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