Irishmen Quotes

I liked Yeats! That wild Irishman. I really loved his love of language, his flow. His chaotic ideas seemed to me just the right thing for a poet. Passion! He was always on the right side. He may be wrongheaded, but his heart was always on the right side. He wrote beautiful poetry. ~ Chinua Achebe

Remembering the loss of those Irishmen from all parts of the island who were sent to their deaths in the imperialist slaughter of the First World War is crucial to understanding our history. It is also important to recognise the special significance in which the Battle of the Somme and the First World War is held. ~ Martin McGuinness

Although the Irish language is connected with the many recollections that twine around the hearts of Irishmen, yet the superior utility of the English tongue, as the medium of all modern communication, is so great that I can witness without a sigh the gradual decline of the Irish language. ~ Daniel O'Connell

Alas! the culture of an Irishman is an enterprise to be undertaken with a sort of moral bog hoe. ~ Henry David Thoreau

With a snort, Trevor responded, "A amadáin? It means you fool, but it's really a polite Irish way of calling someone an asshole. Since there are no assholes in Ireland, we don't really have a word for them, so that's what we say."

His expression was so serious, Cassandra couldn't help but burst out laughing. "I'll have to remember that one. I know a few back home."
"A few assholes or Irishmen? ~ Cecilia Aubrey

A transplanted Irishman, German, Englishman is an American in one generation. A transplanted African is not one in five! ~ Barbara Chase-Riboud

When the Irishman is found outside of Ireland in another environment, he very often becomes a respected man. The economic and intellectual conditions that prevail in his own country do not permit the development of individuality. No one who has any self-respect stays in Ireland, but flees afar as though from a country that has undergone the visitation of an angered Jove. ~ James Joyce

A driver had been sent to meet us. He was gray-haired, short, and nimble and introduced himself. I am Patrick and so is every fourth man in Ireland, and the ones in between are named Sean or Mick or Finn, and I'll be driving you. ~ Sharon Creech

Scots are Jocks,WelshmenTaffies, and Irishmen Paddies or Micks but?it is noticeable there is no similar designation for the English. ~ Anna Pavlova

There were two Irishmen eating sandwiches in a pub and the landlord said: "You can't eat your own food in here." So they swapped sandwiches. ~ Frank Carson

Before the Civil War, the Negro was certainly as efficient a workman as the raw immigrant from Ireland or Germany. But, whereas the Irishmen found economic opportunity wide and daily growing wider, the Negro found public opinion determined to 'keep him in his place.' ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

The Irishman sustains himself during brief periods of joy by the knowledge that tragedy is just around the corner. ~ W.B.Yeats

This would be a grand land if only every Irishman would kill a negro, and be hanged for it. ~ Edward Augustus Freeman

At this point we hated each other as much as it was possible for two Irishmen to do-and that's quite a bit. ~ Kevin Hearne

We refuse to lie here in dishonor! We are not criminals, but Irishmen! This is the crime of which we stand accused. ~ Bobby Sands

Killy arched an eyebrow in disbelief. Don't be thinkin' you can deceive this old man. I've been makin' a fool of myself over women since before you were born. ~ Pamela Clare

A real Irishman will give everything of himself
except that kernel of his soul which makes him a mystery to other peoples. ~ Jim Tully

Put an Englishman into the garden of Eden, and he would find fault with the whole blasted concern; put a Yankee in, and he would see where he could alter it to advantage; put an Irishman in, and he would want to boss the thing; put a Dutchman in, and he would proceed to plant it. ~ Josh Billings

What captivity has been to the Jews, exile has been to the Irish. For us, the romance of our native land begins only after we have left home; it is really only with other people that we become Irishmen. ~ Peter Ackroyd

The Irish recruits who poured into the army in 1846 were already accustomed to the realities of antebellum American nativism. The country had been rocked by anti-Catholic riots even before the famine produced new waves of Irish immigrants; in Boston, Protestant mobs had burned a convent in 1834, and Philadelphia had seen mob attacks on Irishmen ten years later. So the recent immigrants who enlisted for war with Mexico weren't surprised to encounter nativists in the army. They were very much surprised, though, by the intensity of the anti-Irish sentiment they faced from their officers - a social sentiment that was expressed through official discipline. ~ Chris Bray

The doctors are all agreed that I am suffering from want of society. Was never a case like it. First, I did not know that I was suffering at all. Secondly, as an Irishman might say, I had thought it was indigestion of the society I got. ~ Henry David Thoreau

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

For Irishmen, there is no football game to match rugby and if all our young men played rugby not only would we beat England and Wales but France and the whole lot of them put together. ~ Eamon De Valera

Do not push me," she warned in a shaky voice.

"Och, but I will." He shifted on his booted feet, pushed his hips harder against hers, until she felt a part of the wall. A part of him. "You lifted a blade to me, Katarina. I'm going to push you hard. ~ Kris Kennedy

I would never repudiate the fact that I am an Irishman ~ Ian Paisley

Irishmen are best at the specially hard professions - the trades of iron, the lawyer, and the soldier. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Ireland, as distinct from her people, is nothing to me; and the man who is bubbling over with love and enthusiasm for "Ireland," and can yet pass unmoved through our streets and witness all the wrong and the suffering, shame and degradation wrought upon the people of Ireland-yea, wrought by Irishmen upon Irish men and women, without burning to end it, is, in my opinion, a fraud and a liar in his heart, no matter how he loves that combination of chemical elements he is pleased to call Ireland. ~ James Connolly

It is rare that we use our thinking faculty as resolutely as an irishman his spade. To please our friends and relatives we turn out our silver ore in cartloads, while we neglect to workour mines of gold known only to ourselves far up in the Sierras, where we pulled up a bush in our mountain walk, and saw the glittering treasure. Let us return thither. Let it be the price of our freedom to make that known. ~ Henry David Thoreau

I agree with the realistic Irishman who said he preferred to prophesy after the event. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

Mulligan: invented by an Irishman who wanted to hit one more twenty yard grounder. ~ Jim Bishop

Nationalism must now be added to the refuse pile of superstitions. We are now citizens of the world, and the man who divides the race into elect Irishmen and reprobate foreign devils (especially Englishmen) had better live on the Blaskets where he can admire himself without disturbance. ~ George Bernard Shaw

He was a bloody genius with these people, slicker than any confidence artist, more popular than whisky in a room full of Irishmen. ~ Meredith Duran

It is a most disgraceful shame the way in which Irishmen are brought up. They are ashamed of their language, institutions, and of everything Irish. ~ Douglas Hyde

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

There are only three kinds of Irishmen who can't understand women. Young men, old men and men of middle age. ~ Elizabeth Berg

It used to be the case that for an Irishman to come to the U.S. involved a perilous journey on a ship. It involved singing lots of songs before you left saying goodbye, and once you were in the U.S., it involved singing lots of songs about how you were never going to set foot in Ireland again. ~ Joseph O'Neill

Now it's a war on women; tomorrow it's going to be a war on left-handed Irishmen or something like that. ~ Paul Ryan

In my world, reserved Italians, heterosexual hairdressers, clouds without silver linings, ignoble savages, hard-hearted whores, advantageous ill-winds, sober Irishmen, and so on, are not permitted to exist. ~ Martin Amis

The single greatest influence in our lives was the church. The Catholic Church in the 1960s differs from what it is today, especially in the Naugatuck Valley, in those days an overwhelmingly conservative Catholic place.
I was part of what might have been the last generation of American Catholic children who completely and unquestioningly accepted the supernatural as real. Miracles happened. Virgin birth and transubstantiation made perfect sense. Mere humans did in fact, become saints. There was a Holy Ghost. Guardian angels walked beside us and our patron saints really did put in a good word for us every now and then. ~ John William Tuohy

Do you know that an Irishman always respond to a question with another?"
And the Irish guy replies "Who told you that? ~ Cathy Kelly

Irishmen are not reserved, and the company appeared dying to be intimately acquainted. ~ William Hamilton Maxwell

A man cannot be too careful in selecting the individual who is intrusted with his cartel. He should run over the names of his friends, and endeavour to obtain the services of a staid, cool, calculating old fellow; if possible, one who has seen some few shots exchanged: but I should advise his never choosing an Irishman on any account, as nine out of ten of those I have had the pleasure of forming an acquaintance with, both abroad and in this country, have such an innate love of fighting, they cannot bring an affair to an amicable adjustment. ~ A Traveller

I - and there are hundreds of thousands of Irishmen who felt on this subject as I do - have always liked my Celtic countrymen and disliked the English nation; it is a national trait of character, and I cannot help it. ~ Douglas Hyde

I am one who fights without a knack of hoping confidentlysimply a Scotch-Irishman who will not be conquered. ~ Woodrow Wilson

An Irishman needs three things : silence, cunnning, and exile. ~ James Joyce

Now let's take up the minorities in our civilisation, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! ~ Ray Bradbury

I read the story and reread the story, but I still could not find the universality that the little Irishman had spoken of. All I saw in the story was some Irishmen meeting in a room and talking politics. What had that to do with America, especially with my people? It was not until years later that I saw what he meant ... I began to listen, to listen closely to how they talked about their heroes, to how they talked about the dead and how great the dead had once been. I heard it everywhere. ~ Ulysses S. Grant

Look at me, man, look at me and tell me I don't know what I'm about. I'm Conor Larkin. I'm an Irishman and I've had enough. ~ Leon Uris

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

Every Irishman, the saying goes, has a potato in his head. ~ Augustus Hare

There's a real mischievousness about Irishmen, don't you find? ~ Natalie Dormer