John Boyle O'Reilly quotes

Prize-Fighting is not the aim of boxing. This noble exercise ought not to be judged by the dishonesty or the low lives of too many of its professional followers. Let it stand alone, an athletic practice, on the same footing as boating or football. (John Boyle O'Reilly)
The red rose whispers of passion, And the white rose breathes of love; O, the red rose is a falcon, And the white rose is a dove.
John Boyle O'Reilly
It is heroic to prepare for war with a tyrant power. Patriots will always win the admiration of mankind for daring to meet the bloodshed of battle for their country's liberty. But the patriot who is willing to go to that sacrifice will be the first to condemn the aimless and secret shedding of blood in time of peace.
John Boyle O'Reilly
Woman suffrage is an unjust, unreasonable, unspiritual abnormality. It is a hard, undigested, tasteless, devitalized proposition. It is a half-fledged, unmusical, Promethean abomination. It is a quack bolus to reduce masculinity even by the obliteration of femininity.
John Boyle O'Reilly
For the love that is purest and sweetest Has a kiss of desire on the lips.
John Boyle O'Reilly
I'd rather live in Bohemia than in any other land.
John Boyle O'Reilly
Be silent and safe-silence never betrays you.
John Boyle O'Reilly
It has always been the aim of royalty and aristocracy to lower the individual liberty and independence of the common people. A baron and a minute-man could not breathe the same air.
John Boyle O'Reilly
For all time to come, the freedom and purity of the press are the test of national virtue and independence. No writer for the press, however humble, is free from the burden of keeping his purpose high and his integrity white.
John Boyle O'Reilly
The world is large when weary leagues two loving hearts divide But the world is small when your enemy is loose on the other side.
John Boyle O'Reilly
The organized charity, scrimped and iced, In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ. (John Boyle O'Reilly)
With the advance of feudalism came the growth of iron armor, until, at last, a fighting-man resembled an armadillo.
John Boyle O'Reilly
The right word fitly spoken is a precious rarity.
John Boyle O'Reilly
All that is worth seeing in good boxing can best be witnessed in a contest with soft gloves. Every value is called out: quickness, force, precision, foresight, readiness, pluck, and endurance. With these, the rowdy and 'rough' are not satisfied.
John Boyle O'Reilly
The Greeks were the first boxers. Pugilism appears to have been one of the earliest distinctions in play and exercise that appeared between the Hellenes and their Asiatic fathers. The unarmed personal encounter was indicative of a sturdier manhood.
John Boyle O'Reilly
Putting prize-fighting altogether aside as one of the unavoidable evils attending on this manly exercise, the inestimable value of boxing as a training, discipline, and development of boys and young men remains.
John Boyle O'Reilly
The success of the suffrage movement would injure women spiritually and intellectually, for they would be assuming a burden though they knew themselves unable to bear it. It is the sediment, not the wave, of a sex. It is the antithesis of that highest and sweetest mystery - conviction by submission, and conquest by sacrifice.
John Boyle O'Reilly
Social equity is based on justice; politics change on the opinion of the time. The black man's skin will be a mark of social inferiority so long as white men are conceited, ignorant, unjust, and prejudiced. You cannot legislate these qualities out of the white - you must steal them out by teaching, illustration, and example.
John Boyle O'Reilly
The adoption of gloves for all contests will do more to preserve the practice of boxing than any other conceivable means. It will give pugilism new life, not only as a professional boxer's art, but as a general exercise.
John Boyle O'Reilly
Doubt is brother-devil to Despair.
John Boyle O'Reilly
They who see the Flying Dutchman never, never reach the shore. (John Boyle O'Reilly)