J.M. Synge > Quotes

“A man who is not afraid of the sea will soon be drownded, for he will be going out on a day he shouldn't. But WE do be afraid of the sea, and we do only be drownded now and again.”
― J.M. Synge

“A translation is no translation,’ he said, ‘unless it will give you the music of a poem along with the words of it.”
― John Millington Synge

“If the mitred bishops seen you that time, they'd be the like of the holy prophets, I'm thinking, do be straining the bars of Paradise to lay eyes on the Lady Helen of Troy, and she abroad, pacing back and forward, with a nosegay in her golden shawl.”
― J.M. Synge, The Playboy of the Western World

“There's the sound of one of them twittering yellow birds do be coming in the spring-time from beyond the sea, and there'll be a fine warmth now in the sun, and a sweetness in the air, the way it'll be a grand thing to be sitting here quiet and easy smelling the things growing up, and budding from the earth.”
― J.M. Synge, The Well of the Saints

“...drawn to the cities where you'd hear a voice kissing and talking deep love in every shadow of the ditch, and you passing on with an empty, hungry stomach failing from your heart...”
― J.M. Synge

“One’s mother country is better than all else, and gloomy is life when a man sees not his home each morning”
― J.M. Synge, Deirdre of the Sorrows

“I'll say, a strange man is a marvel, with his mighty talk; but what's a squabble in your back yard, and the blow of a loy, have taught me that there's a great gap between a gallous story and a dirty deed.”
― J.M. Synge, The Playboy of the Western World

“A young girl must have her lover in all courses of the sun and moon.”
― J. M. SYNGE

“I am in Aranmor, sitting over a turf fire, listening to a murmur of Gaelic that is rising from a little public-house under my room.”
― J.M. Synge, The Aran Islands

“Go on now and I’ll see you from this day stewing my oatmeal and washing my spuds, for I’m master of all fights from now.”
― J.M. Synge, The Playboy of the Western World

“Isn't there the light of seven heavens in your heart alone, the way you'll be an angel's lamp to me from this out, and I abroad in the darkness, spearing salmons in the Owen, or the Carrowmore?”
― J.M. Synge, The Playboy of the Western World

“TRAMP {Looking closely at the dead man.} It’s a queer look is on him for a man that’s dead. NORA {Half-humorously.} He was always queer, stranger, and I suppose them that’s queer and they living men will be queer bodies after.”
― J.M. Synge, Delphi Complete Works of J. M. Synge (Illustrated)

“It must have been on Synge's second visit to the Aran Islands that he had the experience out of which was wrought what many believe to be his greatest play.”
― J.M. Synge, Riders to the Sea

“For what good is a bit of a farm with cows on it, and sheep on the back hills, when you do be sitting looking out from a door the like of that door, and seeing nothing but the mists rolling down the bog, and the mists again, and they rolling up the bog, and hearing nothing but the wind crying out in the bits of broken trees were left from the great storm, and the streams roaring with the rain.

- Nora; In the Shadow of the Glen”
― J.M. Synge, The Complete Plays of John M. Synge

“Yet the earth itself is a silly place, maybe, when a man’s a fool and talker.”
― J.M. Synge, Deirdre of the Sorrows

“They’re all gone now, and there isn’t anything more the sea can do to me. . . . I’ll have no call now to be up crying and praying when the wind breaks from the south, and you can hear the surf is in the east, and the surf is in the west, making a great stir with the two noises, and they hitting one on the other. I’ll have no call now to be going down and getting Holy Water in the dark nights after Samhain, and I won’t care what way the sea is when the other women will be keening.

- Maurya; Riders to the Sea”
― J.M. Synge, The Complete Plays of John M. Synge

“If it's that ails you, I tell you there's little hurt getting old, though young girls and poets do be storming at the shapes of age. (Passionately.) There's little hurt getting old, saving when you're looking back, the way I'm looking this day, and seeing the young you have a love for breaking up their hearts with folly. (Going to Deirdre.) Take my word and stop Naisi, and the day'll come you'll have more joy having the senses of an old woman and you with your little grandsons shrieking round you, than I'd have this night putting on the red mouth and the white arms you have, to go walking lonesome byways with a gamey king.”
― J.M. Synge, Deirdre of the Sorrows

“Don’t touch me.

I thought to stay your hand with my stories till Fergus would come to be beside them, the way I’d save yourself, Conchubor, and Naisi and Emain Macha; but I’ll walk up now into your halls, and I’ll say it’s here nettles will be growing, and beyond thistles and docks. I’ll go into your high chambers, where you’ve been figuring yourself stretching out your neck for the kisses of a queen of women; and I’ll say it’s here there’ll be deer stirring and goats scratching, and sheep waking and coughing when there is a great wind from the north.

I’m going, surely. In a short space I’ll be sitting up with many listening to the flames crackling, and the beams breaking, and I looking on the great blaze will be the end of Emain.

- Lavarcham; Deirdre of the Sorrows”
― J.M. Synge, The Complete Plays of John M. Synge

“One wonders in these places why anyone is left in Dublin, or London, or Paris, when it would be better, one would think, to live in a tent or hut with this magnificent sea and sky, and to breathe this wonderful air, which is like wine in one's teeth.”
― J.M. Synge, Complete Collection of J. M. Synge (Annotated): Works Include The Playboy of the Western World, The Aran Islands, Riders to the Sea, and More

“May I meet him with one tooth and it aching, and one eye to be seeing seven and seventy devils in the twists of the road, and one old timber leg on him to limp into the scalding grave.”
― J.M. Synge, The Playboy of the Western World

“SCENE. — {THE last cottage at the head of a long glen in County Wicklow.”
― J.M. Synge, Delphi Complete Works of J. M. Synge (Illustrated)

“If it was a hundred horses, or a thousand horses you had itself, what is the price of a thousand horses against a son where there is one son only?

-Maurya; Riders to the Sea”
― J.M. Synge, The Complete Plays of John M. Synge