Ireland And The Irish Quotes

• Ireland, sir, for good or evil, is like no other place under heaven, and no man can touch its sod or breathe its air without becoming better or worse.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Men, Air, Becoming Better

  George Bernard Shaw (2004). “John Bull's Other Island”, p.158, 1st World Publishing

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• How would you know a Cork footballer? He's the one who thinks that oral sex is just talking about it.

  John B. Keane

  Sex, Thinking, Talking

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• What's the use of being Irish if you can't be thick?

  Billy Conn

  Boxing, Use, Funny Irish

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• God invented whiskey to keep the Irish from ruling the world.

  Ed McMahon

  Drinking, Drunk, Alcohol

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• I think being a woman is like being Irish. Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the same.

  Iris Murdoch

  Nice, Women, Reality

  The Red and the Green ch. 2 (1965)

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• An Irishman can be worried by the consciousness that there is nothing to worry about.

  Austin O'Malley

  Worry, Consciousness, Worried

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• When Irish eyes are smiling, watch your step.

  Gerald Kersh

  Eye, Watches, Steps

  Gerald Kersh (1946). “Neither man nor dog: short stories”

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• I was raised in an Irish-American home in Detroit where assimilation was the uppermost priority. The price of assimilation and respectability was amnesia. Although my great-grandparents were victims of the Great Hunger of the 1840's, even though I was named Thomas Emmet Hayden IV after the radical Irish nationalist exile Thomas Emmet, my inheritance was to be disinherited. My parents knew nothing of this past, or nothing worth passing on.

  Tom Hayden

  Home, Past, Passing On

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• No person knows better than you do that the domination of England is the sole and blighting curse of this country. It is the incubus that sits on our energies, stops the pulsation of the nation's heart and leaves to Ireland not gay vitality but horrid the convulsions of a troubled dream.

  Daniel O'Connell

  Dream, Country, Heart

  "O'Connell Correspondence, Vol IV". Book by Daniel O'Connell, Letter to Bishop Doyle (N. 1860), 1831.

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• If a man who can’t count finds a four leaf clover, is he lucky?

  Stanislaw Lem

  Philosophy, Men, Gambling

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• Beware of the man whose God is in the skies.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Wise, Men, Sky

  Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists: Religion"

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• Ireland is a peculiar society in the sense that it was a nineteenth century society up to about 1970 and then it almost bypassed the twentieth century.

  John McGahern

  Peculiar, Century, Being Irish

  "The whole world in a community". Interview with Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. January 5, 2002.

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• 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

  Hate, Men, Rocks

  Liam O'Flaherty (1980). “The Wave: And Other Stories”

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• 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?'

  Quentin Crisp

  Peace, Atheist, Believe

  "The Wit and Wisdom of Quentin Crisp". Book by Quentin Crisp, 1984.

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• I think there's a bit of the devil in everybody. There's a bit of a priest in everybody, too, but I enjoyed playing the devil more. He was more fun.

  Gabriel Byrne

  Fun, Thinking, Devil

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• It's not that the Irish are cynical. It's rather that they have a wonderful lack of respect for everything and everybody.

  Brendan Behan

  Respect, Cynical, Wonderful

  "Brendan Behan, Interviews and Recollections". Book by E. H. Mikhail, Vol. 2 (p. 186), 1982.

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• 

  Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.

  Samuel Beckett

  Inspirational, Motivational, Encouraging

  1983 Worst ward Ho.

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• Put an Irishman on the spit and you can always get another Irishman to turn him.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Spit, Turns, Being Irish

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• Dublin university contains the cream of Ireland: Rich and thick.

  Samuel Beckett

  Funny, Hilarious, Dublin

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• Everything that we inherit, the rain, the skies, the speech, and anybody who works in the English language in Ireland knows that there's the dead ghost of Gaelic in the language we use and listen to and that those things will reflect our Irish identity.

  John McGahern

  Rain, Sky, Identity

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• I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way: by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Appreciation, Land, Usual

  George Bernard Shaw (1977). “The Portable Bernard Shaw”, Viking Adult

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• The problem with Ireland is that it's a country full of genius, but with absolutely no talent.

  Hugh Leonard

  Sarcastic, Country, Genius

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• And the merry love the fiddle, and the merry love to dance.

  William Butler Yeats

  Dance, Fiddle, Merry

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.60, Wordsworth Editions

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• Ireland is a fruitful mother of genius, but a barren nurse.

  John Boyle O'Reilly

  Mother, Nurse, Genius

  John Boyle O'Reilly (1907). “Watchwords”

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• 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

  Mother, Beer, Hands

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