Great Irish Poet Quotes

Irish improves a poet. ~ Sina Queyras

There has never been a great poet who wasn't also a great reader of poetry. ~ Edward Hirsch

You can't be too influenced by a great poet. You simply have to live through it. ~ Kenneth Koch

We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English. ~ Winston S. Churchill

No, I'm not a great painter. Neither am I a great poet. ~ Claude Monet

For next to being a great poet is the power of understanding one. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The great poet draws his creations only from out of his own reality. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Here's to our wives and girlfriends ... may they never meet! ~ Groucho Marx

I'm a great poet. I don't put my poems on paper: they consist of actions and feelings. ~ Honore De Balzac

The Irish way of telling a story is a complex and elaborate one, complete with wild exaggerations, a certain delight in improbable fantasy, and a heightened sense of drama. ~ Rashers Tierney

My parents are Irish, my grandparents are Irish, my great-grandparents are Irish. I was born in England; my blood is Irish. ~ Brian McDermott

It's a big thing to call yourself a poet. All I can say is that I have always written poems. I don't think I'm interested in any discussion about whether I'm a good poet, a bad poet or a great poet. But I am sure, I want to write great poems. I think every poet should want that. ~ Clive James

He was a great poet" They lamented.
No, he was not a great poet," said Theo, "He was a good poet, he could have been better. That's the real loss don't you see? ~ Lloyd Alexander

I can't look at things in the simple, large way that great poets do. ~ Isaac Rosenberg

Whether serving in the military, building industry, organizing politically, or making their way in any other part of American culture, the Irish were determined to create a free and prosperous life for themselves. This Irish-American struggle led to social and political progress for all Americans. ~ Rashers Tierney

The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad. ~ G.K. Chesterton

The English and Americans dislike only some Irish
the same Irish that the Irish themselves detest, Irish writers
the ones that think. ~ Brendan Behan

Drop by Bell's for an Irish Kiss anytime. The best in England ~ JoAnne Kenrick

There's been no poet, no great poet in the history of poetry who hasn't also been a great reader of poetry. This is sometimes distressing to my students when I tell them this. ~ Edward Hirsch

Cork-born Mother Jones was renowned as a dramatic orator who relished props, curses, and all kinds of attention-getting tactics--sound at all Irish to you? She exaggerated her age, referring to strikers not too much younger than herself as "my boys" and donning frumpish costumes to emphasize her "motherly appearance. ~ Rashers Tierney

Scarlett O'Hara's father, Thomas, is an Irish immigrant who names his plantation Tara, after the home of the High Kings in Ireland. In an appealing nod to the "luck of the Irish," we read that Thomas O'Hara won his lands in a card game! ~ Rashers Tierney

I'd rather be a great bad poet than a good bad poet. ~ Ogden Nash

Books of the sages of the ages reflect upon in stages; like honey their words on the tongue give due savour."
{Source: A Green Desert Father} ~ Richard Mc Sweeney

Great men are rare, poets are rarer, but the great man who is a poet, transfiguring his greatness, is the rarest of all events. ~ John Drinkwater

Do you know what constitutes a great poet? He is a person without shame, incapable of blushing. Ordinary fools have moments when they go off by themselves and blush with shame; not so the great poet ... If you really have to quote someone, quote a geographer; that way you won't give yourself away. (p 44) ~ Knut Hamsun

The Irish gave the bagpipes to the Scotts as a joke, but the Scotts haven't seen the joke yet. ~ Oliver Herford

I wish the Irish had never invented whiskey," Pat said. Mr. O'Malley smirked, "The Irish didn't invent it. God did. It was his way of keepin' the Irish from takin' over the world. ~ Ashlyn Chase

Let the Moon and the Stars pour their healing light on you... ~ Irish Blessing

Let justice be done tho the heavens fall. ~ Michael Davitt

The great artist, whether he be musician, painter, or poet, is known for this absolute unexpectedness. ~ Loren Eiseley

My, you do like to dominate ~ JoAnne Kenrick

He brightened. "Are you Irish then?"
"My last name is McNally. I'm as Irish as Paddy's pig. ~ Ashlyn Chase

Now begins to rise in me the familiar rhythm; words that have lain dormant now lift, now toss their crests, and fall and rise, and falls again. I am a poet, yes. Surely I am a great poet. ~ Virginia Woolf

Like a great poet, nature produces the greatest results with the simplest means. There are simply a sun, flowers, water, and love. ~ Heinrich Heine

One can be a great poet and be politically stupid. ~ Umberto Eco

Any great warrior is also a scholar, and a poet, and an artist. ~ Steven Seagal

When I get a very generous introduction like that I explain that I'm emotionally moved, but on the other hand I'm Irish and the Irish are very emotionally moved. My mother is Irish and she cries during beer commercials. ~ Barry McCaffrey

There is, in all great poets, a wisdom of humanity which is superior to any talents they exercise. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The illicit Irish homemade spirit, poitin was frowned upon by the Catholic Church, which made its manufacture grave enough of a sin to require a bishop's absolution rather than that of the regular parish priest. Ah, the lengths the Irish will go to for "the demon drink! ~ Rashers Tierney

In the mid-nineteenth century, Jeremiah Curtin, an Irish-American who had learned Irish, traveled throughout the Irish-speaking enclaves in Connacht and discovered hundreds of previously unrecorded stories. He recorded them in their original language and greatly advanced the study of Irish folklore. At ~ Ryan Hackney

Good poets borrow, great poets steal ~ T. S. Eliot

It's often said that "the Irish built America. The truth is, not only did they build it, they also manufactured, repaired, and cleaned it, especially in the decades before and after the potato famine. ~ Rashers Tierney

The original Guinness Brewery in Dublin has a 9,000-year lease on its property at a perpetual rate of 45 pounds per year--one of the best bargains in Irish commercial history! ~ Rashers Tierney

The problem with being Irish ... is having 'Riverdance' on your back. It's a burden at times. ~ Roddy Doyle

To me, seeing a really great comedian is a bit like watching a musician or a poet. ~ Dick Gregory

When the British Empire turned their back on millions of Irish dying during the Great Famine, Muslim nations sent food relief. ~ Fuad Alakbarov

I would say, from an all-around point of view, Bruce Springsteen is one of the two great poet lords of America, Bob Dylan, coming out of the music world, the two of them. ~ Clive Davis

For a tiny speck in the Atlantic, Ireland has made an outsize contribution to world literature. It's a legacy we can all be proud of, one that would take many pages (or indeed a whole library of books) to recount in full. ~ Rashers Tierney

The typical Irish peasant ate about 10 pounds of potatoes each day and soon towered in physical size over their rural English equivalents who mainly ate bread. ~ Rashers Tierney

You can have Irish identity in the north and also have your Irish passport. ~ Seamus Heaney

I think Paul McGuinness and U2 created the Irish music industry. It certainly wasn't there before that. ~ Van Morrison

I was court-martialed in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence. ~ Thomas Hardy

Left alone in a dark room with a pile of money, the Irish decided what they really wanted to do with it was buy Ireland. From each other. An Irish economist named Morgan Kelly, whose estimates of Irish bank losses have been the most prescient, has made a back-of-the-envelope calculation that puts the property-related losses of all Irish banks at roughly 106 billion euros. (Think $10.6 trillion.) At the rate money flows into the Irish treasury, Irish bank losses alone would absorb every penny of Irish taxes for the next four years. ~ Michael Lewis

Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. ~ Oscar Wilde

All that is best in the great poets of all countries is not what is national in them, but what is universal. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In England especially, poetry's woven into the background fabric of society. And in Ireland, it's in the foreground. The place of the poet in Irish society is enormous. If you say you're a poet in Ireland, you'd better know what you're doing, because the standard and the expectations are incredibly high. ~ David Whyte

It's simply this:
the Irish kiss,
a snog o' bliss,
be blessed luck
from any miss. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Her smile increased. She had perfect white regular teeth; Irish, Juliana decided. Only Irish blood could give that jawline such femininity. ~ Philip K. Dick

I've always been conscious of the fact that there aren't enough Irish voices on British television compared to the amount of Irish people who live there. ~ Chris O'Dowd

Most of the first voluntary Irish immigrants came from Ulster in the north of Ireland. These immigrants were generally, although not exclusively, Protestants. They were known as "Scotch-Irish" or "Scots Irish, ~ Ryan Hackney

May the hinges of our friendship never grow rusty. ~ Irish Toast

I've heard some duff Irish accents. The worst must be Mickey Rourke. ~ James Nesbitt

It's better to spend money like there's no tomorrow than to spend tonight like there's no money. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

Do not resent growing old, many are denied the privilege. ~ Irish Proverb

The void yields up nothing. You have to be a great poet to make it ring. ~ Jules Renard

Being Irish means you belong to the clan. It's what you feel. They feel Irish. ~ Martin Naughton

I had that stubborn streak, the Irish in me I guess. ~ Gregory Peck

If the poet wants to be a poet, the poet must force the poet to revise. If the poet doesn't wish to revise, let the poet abandon poetry and take up stamp-collecting or real estate. ~ Donald Hall

My Irish derivation has nothing to do with me. Why should it? ~ Carroll O'Connor

You gotta understand, my great-grandfather was German and Irish. My grandmother was Indian, and my grandfather was African-American, so we all got a little something in us. ~ Tracy Morgan

A poet is not somebody who has great thoughts. That is the menial duty of the philosopher. A poet is somebody who expresses his thoughts, however commonplace they may be, exquisitely. That is the one and only difference between the poet and everybody else. ~ Mark Forsyth

Ya game is fine, but ya booze-eyes are a problem. Not like ya ta drink this much. I reckon ya banjo'd, so ya are. ~ JoAnne Kenrick

I always gravitate towards anything from Ireland. With Irish lit, I love the use of language, but also in many instances, the Irish writers are writing about people and circumstances that I can relate to. ~ Daniel Woodrell

To paraphrase the great poet Dante, the heavens swirl above us and our eyes are still cast to the ground. ~ Vanna Bonta

The Irish aren't great singers, but they have great songs. ~ Bernadette Devlin

It's very important to me to be an American poet, a Jewish poet, a poet who came of age in the 1960s. ~ Edward Hirsch

When I say be creative I don't mean that you should all go and become great painters and great poets. I simply mean let your life be a painting, let your life be a poem. ~ Osho

In life, we all have a cross to bear and a unique story to tell. We just hope that someone will take the time to listen. ~ Greg McVicker

Whatever is genuine in social relations endures, despite of time, error, absence, and destiny; and that which has no inherent vitality had better die at once. A great poet has truly declared that constancy is no virtue, but a fact. ~ Henry Theodore Tuckerman

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

Both my parents were Irish, and the Irish word for "suntan" is "burn. ~ Mira Grant

I have a thing for red-haired Irish boys, as we know. ~ Sandra Bullock

There's no need to fear the wind if your haystacks are tied down. ~ Irish Proverb

A poet could write volumes about diners, because they're so beautiful. They're brightly lit, with chrome and booths and Naugahyde and great waitresses. Now, it might not be so great in the health department, but I think diner food is really worth experiencing periodically. ~ David Lynch

How do you define a poet? It's very simple. Anyone declaring that he is a poet, is a poet. ~ Billy Cannon

Rama, the ancient idol of the heroic ages, the embodiment of truth, of morality, the ideal son, the ideal husband, and above all, the ideal king, this Rama has been presented before us by the great sage Valmiki. No language can be purer, none chaster, none more beautiful, and at the same time simpler, than the language in which the great poet has depicted the life of Rama. ~ Swami Vivekananda

I'm proud to be Irish. ~ Kelli O'Hara

Being Irish and a citizen of the world, has made me truly appreciate Irish culture, music and history. Whether you're first, second generation Irish or even with no connection to Ireland, you should visit in 2013 for a unique experience. ~ Liam Neeson

Our hospital was famous and housed many great poets and singers. Did the hospital specialize in poets and singers or was it that poets and singers specialized in madness? ~ Susanna Kaysen

I'm most comfortable with the Southern dialects, really. It's easy, for example, for me to do Irish because we've got Irish heritage where I come from. ~ Brad Pitt

Yes, ruling by fooling, is a great British art with great Irish fools to practice on. ~ James Connolly

* An Irish good-bye is when you leave a party or gathering without telling anyone. Highly recommended. ~ Sarah Knight

Irish tory employers hid[e] their sweatshops behind orange flags, and Irish home rule landlords us[e] the green sunburst of Erin to cloak their rack-renting in the festering slums of our Irish towns. ~ James Connolly

The most important things to do in the world are to get something to eat, something to drink and somebody to love you. ~ Brendan Behan

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A great poet can give wings to abstract thoughts that touch a reader's mind with the ecstasy of joy. ~ Debasish Mridha

I started out as a poet. I've always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels. ~ Alice Walker

This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever. [speaking about the Irish] ~ Sigmund Freud

I think there's nothing better than laughing in life, so that's nice, to be thought of as someone who can make someone laugh. It's 'cause I think life is hard. You know, my dad was a really silly man. A great Irish silly man. And that's fine. ~ Joan Cusack

My wife and I both come from Irish families. There are two kinds of Irish families: the hitting kind and the kidding kind. If you're fortunate - and both of us are - you come from the kidding kind of Irish family. ~ P. J. O'Rourke