The Irish Quotes

Everything in Paris is gay," said Ignatius Gallaher. "They believe in enjoying life
and don't you think they're
right? If you want to enjoy yourself properly you must go to Paris. And, mind you, they've a great feeling for
the Irish there. When they heard I was from Ireland they were ready to eat me, man. ~ James Joyce

We call upon a God so great, amidst a very sacred date, to bless us with a mighty feast of wine and bread and beast. To Dagda of the Irish Isle, God of Earth with charming smile, we gently do invoke thy power; be with us on the witching hour. ~ Katerina Martinez

These people in the North-east of Ireland, from old prejudices perhaps more from anything else, from the whole of their past history, would prefer, I believe, to accept the government of a foreign country rather than submit to be governed by honourable gentlemen below the gangway [i.e. the Irish Nationalist Party]. ~ Bonar Law

It is not blood that makes you Irish but a willingness to be part of the Irish Nation. ~ Thomas Davis

Felicia's Journey by the Irish short-story writer and novelist William Trevor. ~ Will Schwalbe

The Irish always jest even though they jest with tears. ~ Katharine Tynan

The Irish are the one race for which psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever ... because they already live in a dream world. ~ Sigmund Freud

Books, the children of the brain. ~ Jonathan Swift

Britain also banned exports from its colonies that competed with its own products, home and abroad. It banned cotton textile imports from India ('calicoes'), which were then superior to the British ones. In 1699 it banned the export of woolen cloth from its colonies to other countries (the Wool Act), destroying the Irish woolen industry and stifling the emergence of woollen manufacture in America. ~ Ha-Joon Chang

It is one of their beauties, the Irish, the way they crush and expand the language all at once How they mangle it and revere it. How they color even their silences. ~ Colum McCann

I saw the man my friendwants pardoned, Thomas Flinton. He is a bright, good-looking fellow ... Of his innocence all are confident. The governor strikes me as a man seeking popularity, who lacks the independence and manhood to do right at the risk of losing popularity. Afraid of what will be said. He is prejudiced against the Irish and Democrats. ~ Rutherford B. Hayes

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

The Irish seem to want their artists to function as surrogate priests - sources of authority, founts of wisdom, people who will offer us free-range organic consolation, you name it. It's not a position I feel comfortable with. ~ Alex Johnston

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

They won't break me because the desire for freedom, and the freedom of the Irish people, is in my heart. The day will dawn when all the people of Ireland will have the desire for freedom to show. It is then that we will see the rising of the moon. ~ Bobby Sands

The Irish are often nervous about having the appropriate face for the occasion. They have to be happy at weddings, which is a strain, so they get depressed; they have to be sad at funerals, which is easy, so they get happy. ~ Peggy Noonan

All the same, she wondered if they did know what she thought and felt, if they knew without knowing, in that way the Irish were so adept at doing. ~ Benjamin Black

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

Bullshit, as you Americans say.
He's Irish.
The Irish say bullshit too. ~ Kevin Hearne

The Irish are the niggers of Europe, lads. ~ Roddy Doyle

According to Rushdoony, the conditions of the Irish transport were as bad or worse than what we know of slave ships, and the condition of Irish immigrants on arrival was "far worse than that of slaves: ~ Julie Ingersoll

Two Smartass Jews Walk into a Bar...
Two smartass Jews walk into a bar
in Hell's Kitchen, New York.
The Irish bartender asks the first Jew,
'What will you have?'
The first Jew points to the second Jew and says,
'I'll have what's he's having.'
The bartender then asks the second Jew,
'So, what will you have?'
The second Jew points to his friend the first Jew and says,
'I'll have what's he's having.'
The bartender becomes so discombobulated,
he drinks himself to death.

This story has no moral ~
all we have is one dead drunken Irish bartender on the floor
and two smartass New York Jews high-fiving each other
on their way to a Broadway show. ~ Beryl Dov

The best thanks we could offer those who went before and raised the Irish working class from their knees was to press forward with determination and enthusiasm towards the ultimate goal of their efforts, a Co-operative Commonwealth for Ireland. ~ James Larkin

From my earliest youth I have regarded the connection between Ireland and Great Britain as the curse of the Irish nation, and felt convinced, that while it lasted, this country would never be free or happy. In consequence, I determined to apply all the powers which my individual efforts could move, in order to separate the two countries. ~ Theobald Of Bec

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

My mother - the Irish side of the family - was very musical. My mother was a singer; there was music around the house all the time. ~ Len Cariou

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

Forgiveness is the most important thing. We all have to forgive what was done to us - the Irish people have to forgive. The African people. The Jewish people. We all have to forgive and understand the only way to stop the cycle of hate and abuse is not to allow yourself to get caught in it. ~ Sinead O'Connor

If a man who can't count finds a four leaf clover, is he lucky? ~ Stanislaw Lem

I came to the resolve that the attempt was not only worth trying, but should be tried in the very near future if we wanted at all to keep our flag flying; for I was sure as of my own existence that if another decade was allowed to pass without an endeavour of some kind or another to shake off an unjust yoke, the Irish people would sink into lethargy from which it would be impossible for any patriot ... to arouse them ... ~ James Stephens

It's a great wonder to me, the Irish attachment to our history. What is it but a series of lamentations? ~ Dorothy Salisbury Davis

Even American women are not felt to be persons in the same sense as the male immigrants among the Hungarians, Poles, Russian Jews,
not to speak of Italians, Germans, and the masters of all of us
the Irish! ~ Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi

Everybody who has a baby thinks everybody who hasn't a baby ought to have a baby,
Which accounts for the success of such plays as the Irish Rose of Abie,
The idea apparently being that just by being fruitful
You are doing something beautiful,
Which if it is true
Means that the common housefly is several million times more beautiful than me or you. ~ Ogden Nash

A clover that sprouts four leaves, rather than three, is a mutation and is considered 'lucky' according to Irish mythology. Why? According to Celtic lore, each leaf of clover represents something special. One leaf represents faith, one hope, one love and, and , if a fourth leaf is present, that's luck. ~ Leslie Le Mon

Education should foster; this education is meant to repress. Education should inspire this education is meant to tame. Education should harden; this education is meant to enervate. The English are too wise a people to attempt to educate the Irish in any worthy sense. As well expect them to arm us ~ Patrick Pearse

If the Irish programme did not insist on the Irish language I suppose I could call myself a nationalist. As it is, I am content torecognize myself an exile: and, prophetically, a repudiated one. ~ James Joyce

I don't think Ireland has ever had a genius for the novel. Of course, there were plenty of Irish novels, but I don't think that was ever the natural means of expression for the Irish. ~ Lady Gregory

The behaviour of the English people I had run into was making it very difficult to nail down a theory that the reason my trip so far had been such a bizarre success, was that Irish people were crazy. One Englishman had spent a morning on the telephone trying to organise a helicopter to take me out to an island, when a boat was leaving only a few yards away, and here was another, making a two-hour round trip for no reason other than to lend a helping hand. Two of the more eccentric pieces of behaviour hadn't been performed by the Irish, but by my fellow countrymen. However, both Andy and Tony had embraced wholeheartedly a love of the Irish way of living life. ~ Tony Hawks

I did a great deal of research to write 'The Irish Duke.' Since all the people in this Lords of the Realm series are real historical characters, everything had to be authentic. I researched Woburn Abbey, where my heroine lived, and everything about Barons Court in Ireland, which was the ancestral home of Abercorn. ~ Virginia Henley

The English playwrights of the '50s and '60s didn't really keep writing or getting produced, while the Irish did. There's encouragement for the younger ones also in the fact that Ireland is exceptional in its ability to make theater part of the national dialogue, and it reaches to all four corners of the country. ~ Garry Hynes

The Irish do not want anyone to wish them well; they want everyone to wish their enemies ill. ~ Harold Nicolson

White America looks at the Vietnamese, the Irish, the Jews, and they say, 'What's the problem with the blacks?' The resentment you hear around this town is based on that, not on old ideas of superiority. ~ Greg Iles

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

I do not know,' said the man, 'what the custom of the English may be; but it is the custom of the Irish to hate villains. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

The Irish, as a race, have the oral tradition in their blood. A direct question to them is an anathema, but in other cases, a mere syllable of a hero's name will elicit whole chapters of stories. ~ P.L. Travers

[on the Irish] A race of poets and wordsmiths, my ass. ~ M. Edward McNally

I went to live in Barcelona in 1975, when I was twenty. Even before I went there, I knew more about the Spanish Civil War than I did about the Irish Civil War. I liked Barcelona, and then I grew to like a place in the Catalan Pyrenees called the Pillars, especially an area between the village of Flavors and the high mountains around it. ~ Colm Toibin

Kenneth Tynan once said that the only people who can do Russian drama, outside of the Russians themselves, are the Irish. I presume that's because we are somewhat manic in the mood department. It's no bother to soar from the darkest depths to the mountaintops of delight, with the heart borne by all of that which is alive and singing. It's even less bother to swan-dive into the pits of despair and total hopelessness, with the realization that it's no use being Irish unless you know the world is eventually going to break your heart. ~ Malachy McCourt

In becoming an Irishman, Patrick wedded his world to theirs, his faith to their life…Patrick found a way of swimming down to the depths of the Irish psyche and warming and transforming Irish imagination – making it more humane and more noble while keeping it Irish." (161) ~ Thomas Cahill

Perhaps he found it strange being accompanied by a Chinese-Nigerian arms trafficking pirate, but the Irish priest had just followed me silently on board the covert government transport. ~ Dayo Ntwari

Put an Irishman on the spit and you can always get another Irishman to turn him. ~ George Bernard Shaw

I was born on a storm-swept rock and hate the soft growth of sun-baked lands where there is no frost in men's bones. ~ Liam O'Flaherty

As the seasons age us
I close my eyes and wish for snow
Alas the Irish seasons been foretold
For Spring will dawn and I will go
Into another season Jack Frost cold.
And when its here, I wish for night
As childhood memories flash right by
To see the birds in humble flight
I wish for Summer with a sigh
And on I go to months so sweet
Dawns sweet chorus and sunbeams bright
I yearn for Autumn leaves under feet
Yet now I dream of Winters night
As Auld Lang Syne rings in New Year
Alas! I'm one year older as Spring draws near. ~ Michelle Geaney

Most of my jokes are racist - usually about the Irish. ~ Frank Carson

This was especially true of the Irish in Ireland in relation to the British, who for centuries treated them as an inferior race. Note, however, that their skin color was indistinguishable from that of those considered to be "white". If anything, the skin of most people of Irish descent is "fairer" than that of others of European heritage. But their actual complexion didn't matter, because the dominant racial group has the cultural authority to define the boundaries around "white" as it chooses. ~ Allan G. Johnson

I grew up in a brick house. What's wrong with bricks? An Englishman took me aside and said, "You have to understand, all the bricklayers in England are Irish, and the English hate the Irish." ~ Carl Andre

That's what the holidays are for - for one person to tell the stories and another to dispute them. Isn't that the Irish way? ~ Lara Flynn Boyle

The presidency is an independent office and the Irish people whom I appreciate so much and I take with such responsibility have given a very clear mandate on a very clear set of ideas to me, as the ninth president. ~ Michael D. Higgins

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

And the merry love the fiddle, and the merry love to dance. ~ William Butler Yeats

The Irish sometimes make and keep a vow against whiskey; these vows are usually limited to a short time. ~ Maria Edgeworth

Violence and irrationality were so long and thoroughly cultivated among the Irish, and so perfectly ingrained into their nature, that modern civilization has as yet been unable to extract the virus. ~ Thomas Mellon

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

So here he sits one drunk nigger in a puclic libary after closing, with the book open in front of me and the bottle of Old Kentucky on my left. 'Tell the truth and shame the devil,' my mom used to say , but she forgot to tell me that sometimes you can't shame Mr Splitfoot sober. The Irish know, but of course they're God's white niggers and who knows maybe they're a step ahead. ~ Stephen King

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

The Scots (originally Irish, but by now Scotch) were at this time inhabiting Ireland, having driven the Irish (Picts) out of Scotland; while the Picts (originally Scots) were now Irish (living in brackets) and vice versa. It is essential to keep these distinctions clearly in mind (and verce visa). ~ W.C. Sellar

The Irish Government can no longer stand by and see innocent people injured and perhaps worse. ~ Jack Lynch

I've always found the Irish really attractive-they make wonderful writers and sexy firefighters, and if they didn't like the Red Socks they'd be perfect. ~ Julie Klausner

I became a writer not because my father was one - my father made false teeth for a living. I became a writer because the Irish nuns who educated me taught me something about bravery with their willingness to give so much to me. ~ Richard Rodriguez

I have often heard it said that the Irish are too ready to forgive. It is a noble failing. ~ Katharine Tynan

In old times people used to try and square the circle; now they try and devise schemes for satisfying the Irish nation. ~ Samuel Butler

Stephen came on deck reflecting with satisfaction upon his sloth, now a parlour-boarder with the Irish Franciscans at Rio, and a secret drinker of the altar-wine. ~ Patrick O'Brian

I was beginning to understand how the Irish mentality worked. The more foolish, illogical or surreal one's actions were perceived t be (and mine surely fell into one of these categories), the wider the arms of hospitality were opened in salutation. ~ Tony Hawks

For the Irish, life is a matter of perpetual grievance. We remember the Famine, but forget the Draft Riots. We seal off our neighborhoods to strangers, but allow our own priests to victimize our own children. We worship violence and we enslave ourselves to alcohol, we lie and steal and kill without conscience for generations at a time. But it's all right in the end, and do you know why? Because we don't tolerate lust. ~ Mary Gordon

True the greater part of the Irish people was close to starvation. The numbers of weakened people dying from disease were rising. So few potatoes had been planted that, even if they escaped bight, they would not be enough to feed the poor folk who relied upon them. More and more of those small tenants and cottagers, besides, were being forced off the land and into a condition of helpless destitution. Ireland, that is to say, was a country utterly prostrated.
Yet the Famine came to an end. And how was this wonderful thing accomplished? Why, in the simplest way imaginable. The famine was legislated out of existence. It had to be. The Whigs were facing a General Election. ~ Edward Rutherfurd

The Irish do have a despairing quality of gaiety, but they have also a dour and brooding ghost that rides on their shoulders and peers in on their thoughts. Let them laugh too loudly, it sticks a long finger down their throats. They condemn themselves before they are charged, and this makes them defensive always. ~ John Steinbeck

This is what songs do, even dumb pop songs: they remind us that emotions are not an inconvenient and vaguely embarrassing aspect of the human enterprise but its central purpose. They make us feel specific things we might never have felt otherwise. Every time I listen to "Sunday Bloody Sunday," for instance, I feel a pugnacious righteousness about the fate of the Irish people. I hear that thwacking military drumbeat and Bono starts wailing about the news he heard today and I'm basically ready to enlist in the IRA and stomp some British Protestant Imperialist Ass, hell yes, bring on the fucking bangers and mash and let's get this McJihad started. ~ Steve Almond

I'm just following the Irish tradition of songwriting, the Irish way of life, the human way of life. Cram as much pleasure into life, and rail against the pain you have to suffer as a result. Or scream and rant with the pain, and wait for it to be taken away with beautiful pleasure ... ~ Shane MacGowan

The Irish mingled their Christianity with folk beliefs in fairies and changelings. ~ Ryan Hackney

The identity of the model for the Syra-Cusa has been debated. Terrance Killeen, in an article in the Irish Times, thought her to be Nancy Canard, but Knowlson considered Lucia Joyce more likely.
...

The most profound "clue" is simply the character's name, for Lucia Joyce had been named for Lucia, martyr of Syracuse, patron saint of eyes, light, and lucidity. ~ Carol Loeb Shloss

There was a love, but of the Irish kind, reserved and embarrassed by its own humanity. ~ Anne Griffin

For all their reputation for chattiness and storytelling, the Irish I knew were so skillful with words there was sometimes no need for them at all. ~ Camille DeAngelis

[On the Irish:] Strange race ... Don't know what they want, but want it like the devil. ~ Mary Roberts Rinehart

The sun was already long past the spire when Garrick purchased a mug of coffee from his regular man on the tip of Oxford Street. But his palate had been educated by 21st century coffee, and he judged this mug as bilge water not fit for the Irish. ~ Eoin Colfer

I've never seen a nation more quick at finding joy in a sad situation than the Irish at a funeral. ~ E.A. Bucchianeri

You're certainly chipper this morning."
"Damn straight. Chipper's my middle name. I'm going out to spread joy and laughter to all of mankind."
"What a nice change of pace." There was amusement riding along with the Irish in his voice. "Perhaps you'll start now by going down with me to see Summerset off."
She grimaced. "That might spoil my appetite." Testing, she polished off the pancakes. "No, no, it doesn't. I can do that. I can go down and wave bye-bye."
Brow lifted, he gave her hair a quick tug. "Nicely."
"I won't do the happy dance until he's out of sight. Three weeks. ~ J.D. Robb

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

Somebody once said that the Irish derived the greatest benefit from the English language. They court it like a beautiful woman. They make it bray with donkey laughter, they fling it at the sky like paint pots full of rainbow colors. ~ Malachy McCourt

Our skin is provided as adequately as theirs with endurance against the assaults of the weather: witness so many nations who have not yet tried the use of any clothes. Our ancient Gauls wore hardly any clothes; nor do the Irish, our neighbors, under so cold a sky. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Some evidence seems to exist that an idea prevailed that in the fairy sphere there is a reversal of the seasons, our winter being their summer. Some such belief seems to have been known to Robert Kirk, for he tells us that 'when we have plenty they [the fairies] have scarcity at their homes.' In respect of the Irish fairies they seem to have changed their residences twice a year: in May, when the ancient Irish "flitted" from their winter houses to summer pastures, and in November, when they quitted these temporary quarters. ~ Lewis Spence

The embassy's front door was of bulletproof steel lined with a veneer of English oak. You attained it by touching a button in a silent lift. The royal crest, in this air-conditioned stillness, suggested silicone and funeral parlours. The windows, like the doors, had been toughened to frustrate the Irish and tinted to frustrate the sun. Not a whisper of the real world penetrated. The silent traffic, cranes, shipping, old town and new town, the brigade of women in orange tunics gathering leaves along the central reservation of the Avenida Balboa, were mere specimens in Her Majesty's inspection chamber. From the moment you set foot in British extraterritorial airspace, you were looking in, not out. - ~ John Le Carre

I must admit, even though I'm the product of two Jewish parents, I think the Irish temper got in there somewhere, so I'm going to check Mom's genealogy. ~ Harvey Weinstein

Books, ingeniously coupled with music and alcohol, enabled the Irish to transcend reality. ~ Joe Queenan

Not in vain is Ireland pouring itself all over the earth ... The Irish, with their glowing hearts and reverent credulity, are needed in this cold age of intellect and skepticism. ~ Lydia M. Child

The Irish People are expecting famine day by day... and they ascribe it unanimously, not so much to the rule of heaven as to the greedy and cruel policy of England. Be that right or wrong, that is their feeling. They believe that the season as they roll are but ministers of England's rapacity; that their starving children cannot sit down to their scanty meal but they see the harpy claw of England in their dish. They behold their own wretched food melting in rottenness off the face of the earth, and they see heavy-laden ships, freighted with the yellow corn their own hands have sown and reaped, spreading all sail for England; they see it and with every grain of that corn goes a heavy curse. Again the people believe - no matter whether truly or falsely - that if they should escape the hunger and the fever their lives are not safe from judges and juries. They do not look upon the law of the land as a terror to evil-doers, and a praise to those who do well; they scowl on it as an engine of foreign rule, ill-omened harbinger of doom. ~ John Mitchel

Immigrants have always come into the country with low levels of education. Whether it's the Irish or Italian or Polish, here is the land of opportunity. It's where people come in at the bottom and build themselves up. To try to bring in people who have already made it is un-American. ~ Lionel Sosa

For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear-head or water conservationalist, pro-computerologist or Neo-Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics. The real world is the playing ground for each and every group, to make or unmake laws. But the tip of the nose of my book or stories or poems is where their rights end and my territorial imperatives begin, run and rule. If Mormons do not like my plays, let them write their own. If the Irish hate my Dublin stories, let them rent typewriters. If teachers and grammar school editors find my jawbreaker sentences shatter their mushmilk teeth, let them eat stale cake dunked in weak tea of their own ungodly manufacture. If the Chicano intellectuals wish to re-cut my "Wonderful Ice Cream Suit" so it shapes "Zoot," may the belt unravel and the pants fall. ~ Ray Bradbury

Gladstone .. spent his declining years trying to guess the answer to the Irish Question; unfortunately, whenever he was getting warm, the Irish secretly changed the Question, ... ~ W.C. Sellar

Presentation was the name of the Catholic church [my mother's family] attended, and this is what I love about the Irish: My mother became known as the second prettiest girl at Presentation parish. "Why was that okay?" I once asked her. "Oh, because everybody knew Mary Griffin was the most beautiful girl at Presentation," she replied. My mom was happy to be on the D-list! Just like I'm not trying to be Brooke Shields, she wasn't trying to be Mary Griffin. ~ Kathy Griffin

The Irish move to the sound of the guns like salmon to the sea ~ Rudyard Kipling