1871-1909, Irish Poet, Dramatist
As a man has no right to kill one of his children if it is diseased or insane, so a man who has made the gradual and conscious expression of his personality in literature the aim of his life, has no right to suppress himself any carefully considered work which seemed good enough when it was written. Suppression, if it is deserved, will come rapidly enough from the same causes that suppress the unworthy members of a man's family.
J. M. Synge – [Writers and Writing]
I'm a good scholar when it comes to reading but a blotting kind of writer when you give me a pen.
J. M. Synge – [Scholars and Scholarship]
In a good play every speech should be as fully flavored as a nut or apple.
J. M. Synge – [Theater]
In the middle classes the gifted son of a family is always the poorest — usually a writer or artist with no sense for speculation — and in a family of peasants, where the average comfort is just over penury, the gifted son sinks also, and is soon a tramp on the roadside.
J. M. Synge – [Sons]
Lord, confound this surly sister, blight her brow with blotch and blister, cramp her larynx, lung and liver, in her guts a galling give her.
J. M. Synge – [Family]
The grief of the keen is no personal complaint for the death of one woman over eighty years, but seems to contain the whole passionate rage that lurks somewhere in every native of the island. In this cry of pain the inner consciousness of the people seems to lay itself bare for an instant, and to reveal the mood of beings who feel their isolation in the face of a universe that wars on them with winds and seas.
J. M. Synge – [Grief]