Ireland And The Irish Quotes by John Boyle O’Reilly, John F. Kennedy, George Bernard Shaw, Katharine Tynan, Stanislaw Lem, Brendan Behan and many others.
Ireland is a fruitful mother of genius, but a barren nurse.
What’s the use of being Irish if the world doesn’t break your heart?
Put an Irishman on the spit and you can always get another Irishman to turn him.
There is an Irish way of paying compliments as though they were irresistible truths which makes what would otherwise be an impertinence delightful.
I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way: by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could.
If a man who can’t count finds a four leaf clover, is he lucky?
It’s not that the Irish are cynical. It’s rather that they have a wonderful lack of respect for everything and everybody.
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.
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.
Why should Ireland be treated as a geographical fragment of England – Ireland is not a geographical fragment, but a nation.
And the merry love the fiddle, and the merry love to dance.
Other people have a nationality. The Irish and the Jews have a psychosis.
Irishness is not primarily a question of birth or blood or language; it is the condition of being involved in the Irish situation, and usually of being mauled by it.
When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, ‘Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don’t believe?’
We are no petty people. We are one of the great stocks of Burke; we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of Parnell. We have created most of the modern literature of this country. We have created the best of its political intelligence.
You know it is summer in Ireland when the rain gets warmer.
If a man who cannot count finds a four-leaf clover, is he entitled to happiness?
