Poetry by Paul O'Mahony

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I never went to college — I don’t believe in college for writers. The thing is very dangerous. I believe too many professors are too opinionated & too snobbish & too intellectual, & the intellect is a great danger to creativity … because you begin to rationalize & make up reasons for things, instead of staying with your own basic truth — who you are, what you are, what you want to be. I’ve had a sign over my typewriter for over 25 years now, which reads “Don’t think!” You must never think at the typewriter — you must feel. Your intellect is always buried in that feeling anyway.
– Ray Bradbury

A man, yet by these tears a little boy again,
Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves…
– Walt Whitman

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
– Mary Oliver

Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem…
– Walt Whitman

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs…
– Wilfred Owen

And all men kill the thing they love,
By all let this be heard …
– Oscar Wilde

A book must be an axe which smashes the frozen sea within us.
– Franz Kafka

If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.
– Emily Dickinson

There are worse things than having behaved foolishly in public.
– Fleur Adcock

Favourite Quotes

“We are meaning making machines”
– Paul O’Mahony

“I never went to college — I don’t believe in college for writers. The thing is very dangerous. I believe too many professors are too opinionated & too snobbish & too intellectual, & the intellect is a great danger to creativity … because you begin to rationalize & make up reasons for things, instead of staying with your own basic truth — who you are, what you are, what you want to be. I’ve had a sign over my typewriter for over 25 years now, which reads “Don’t think!” You must never think at the typewriter — you must feel. Your intellect is always buried in that feeling anyway.”
– Ray Bradbury

“A man, yet by these tears a little boy again,
Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves…”
– Walt Whitman

“I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”
– Mary Oliver

“Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem…”
– Walt Whitman

“If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs…”
– Wilfred Owen

“And all men kill the thing they love,
By all let this be heard …”
– Oscar Wilde

“A book must be an axe which smashes the frozen sea within us.”
– Franz Kafka

“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.”
– Emily Dickinson

“There are worse things than having behaved foolishly in public.”
– Fleur Adcock

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Category: aphorisms

I think

the quality of my feelings

determines the quality of my thinking

which determines the taste of my life

– I think?

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Posted on August 12, 2025August 13, 2025Author Paul O'MahonyCategories aphorisms, omaniquote, poetryTags feelings, life, qualityLeave a comment on I think

Mobile writing

The pen is an engine for driving words.

Words come wrapped in swaddling clothes.

Words are units of time.

Sentences are sentences

I have been sentenced to write.

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Posted on September 26, 2020September 27, 2020Author Paul O'MahonyCategories aphorismsTags page, pen, phrase, sentence, time, wordsLeave a comment on Mobile writing

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