John Millington Synge Quotes

d. 1909 Ireland

John Millington Synge (April 16, 1871 – March 24, 1909) was an Irish dramatist, poet, prose writer, and collector of folklore. He was a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival and was one of the cofounders of the Abbey Theatre.

Ireland
Playwrights
Poets

Also known as: J.M. Synge, John M. Synge, John Synge, Synge, John Millington

Random John Millington Synge quote

13 quotes

There is no language like the Irish for soothing and quieting.

The Aran Islands (1907)

What is the price of a thousand horses against a son where there is one son only?

Riders to the Sea (1904)

In a good play every speech should be as fully flavoured as a nut or apple.

The Playboy of the Western World (1907)

They're cheering a young lad, the champion playboy of the Western World.

The Playboy of the Western World (1907)

I’m a good scholar when it comes to reading but a blotting kind of writer when you give me a pen.

These are rotten, so you’re the Queen
Of all are living, or have been.

A translation is no translation, he said, unless it will give you the music of a poem along with the words of it.

The Aran Islands (1907)

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.

I knew the stars, the flowers, and the birds,
The gray and wintry sides of many glens,
And did but half remember human words,
In converse with the mountains, moors, and fens.

Prelude (1910)

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.

May I meet him with one tooth and it aching, and one eye to be seeing seven and seventy divils in the twists of the road, and one old timber leg on him to limp into the scalding grave. There he is now crossing the strands, and that the Lord God would send a high wave to wash him from the world.

The Playboy of the Western World (1907)

I asked if I got sick and died, would you
With my black funeral go walking too,
If you’d stand close to hear them talk or pray
While I’m let down in that steep bank of clay.

A man who is not afraid of the sea will soon be drowned, he said, 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.

The Aran Islands (1907)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: John Millington Synge (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.