John Boyle O'Reilly

“Be silent and safe - silence never betrays you.”

“Be silent and safe — silence never betrays you; Be true to your word and your work and your friend; Put least trust in him who is foremost to praise you, Nor judge of a road till it draw to...”

“Be true to your word and your work and your friend.”

“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 patrio...”

“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,...”

“With the advent of chivalry, the art of boxing waned. The evolution of feudal aristocracy, with other and widely different exercises, pastimes and weapons from those of the common people, ma...”

“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.”

“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,...”

“The brutalities of a fight with bare hands, the crushed nasal bones, maimed lips, and other disfigurements, which call for the utter abolition of boxing in the interests of humanity, at once...”

“Women are at once the guardians and the well-spring of the world's faith, morality, and tenderness; and if ever they are degraded to a commonplace level with men, this fine essential quality...”

“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 athle...”

“With the advance of feudalism came the growth of iron armor, until, at last, a fighting-man resembled an armadillo.”

“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 enduranc...”

“Every boy in a free country ought to be instructed in boxing, wrestling, and the use of weapons. Every young man ought to be drilled. Every householder ought, at least, to have a right to ow...”

“Women ought to be fully guarded by law in all rights of property, labor, profession, etc.; but, roughly stated, the voting population ought to represent the fighting population.”

“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 unarme...”

“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 a...”

“The right word fitly spoken is a precious rarity.”

“Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.”