The Third Policeman
Flann O'Brien
Top 10 Best Quotes
“Your talk," I said, "is surely the handiwork of wisdom because not one word of it do I understand.”
“You mean that because I have no name I cannot die and that you cannot be held answerable for death even if you kill me?" "That is about the size of it," said the Sergeant. I felt so sad and so entirely disappointed that tears came into my eyes and a lump of incommunicable poignancy swelled tragically in my throat. I began to feel intensely every fragment of my equal humanity. The life that was bubbling at the end of my fingers was real and nearly painful in intensity and so was the beauty of my warm face and the loose humanity of my limbs and the racy health of my red rich blood. 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.”
“The gross and net result of it is that people who spent most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who are nearly half people and half bicycles...when a man lets things go so far that he is more than half a bicycle, you will not see him so much because he spends a lot of his time leaning with one elbow on walls or standing propped by one foot at kerbstones.”
“I am completely half afraid to think.”
“What you think is the point is not the point at all but only the beginning of the sharpness.”
“Hell goes round and round. In shape it is circular, and by nature it is interminable, repetitive, and nearly unbearable.”
“Strange enlightenments are vouchsafed to those who seek the higher places.”
“Is it life?" he answered, "I would rather be without it," he said, "for there is queer small utility in it. You cannot eat it or drink it or smoke it in your pipe, it does not keep the rain out and it is a poor armful in the dark if you strip it and take it to bed with you after a night of porter when you are shivering with the red passion. It is a great mistake and a thing better done without, like bed-jars and foreign bacon.”
“My father...was a man who understood all dogs thoroughly and treated them like human beings.”
“Always ask any questions that are to be asked and never answer any. Turn everything you hear to your own advantage. Always carry a repair outfit. Take left turns as much as possible. Never apply your front brake first. ‘If you follow them’, said the Sergeant, ‘you will save your soul and never get a fall on a slippery road.”
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Book Keywords:
strange, rules-to-live-by, humor, gallows-humour, rules, humour, wisdom, dogs
