Irishmen Quotes - Page 2

• An Irishman needs three things : silence, cunnning, and exile.

  James Joyce

  Humor, Silence, Three

  48 Copy quote

• 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

  Hero, Talking, Years

  7 Copy quote

• An Irishman will always soften bad news, so that a major coronary is no more than 'a bad turn' and a near hurricane that leaves thousands homeless is 'good drying weather'.

  Hugh Leonard

  Weather, News, Hurricanes

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• But 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

  Beautiful, Passion, Heart

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• I agree with the realistic Irishman who said he preferred to prophesy after the event.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Advice, Events, Realistic

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• Can it be possible that the painters make John the Baptist a Spaniard in Madrid and an Irishman in Dublin?

  Mark Twain

  Pain, Baptists, Dublin

  Mark Twain (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)”, p.4285, Delphi Classics

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• The Irishman frees himself from slavery when he realizes the truth that the capitalist system is the most foreign thing in Ireland. The Irish question is a social question. The whole age-long fight of the Irish people against their oppressors resolves itself in the last analysis into a fight for the mastery of the means of life, the sources of production, in Ireland. Who would own and control the land? The people, or the invaders; and if the invaders, which set of them - the most recent swarm of land thieves, or the sons of the thieves of a former generation?

  James Connolly

  Mean, Fighting, Son

  294 Copy quote

• Who better than an Irishman can understand the Indians, while still being stirred by tales of the US cavalry?

  John Ford

  Hollywood, Film, Tales

  31 Copy quote

• Today a Scot is leading a British army in France [Field Marshall Douglas Haig], another is commanding the British Grand Fleet at sea [Admiral David Beatty], while a third directs the Imperial General Staff at home [Sir William Roberton]. The Lord Chancellor is a Scot [Viscount Finlay]; so are the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Foreign Secretary [Bonar Law and Arthur Balfour]. The Prime Minister is a Welshman [David Lloyd George], and the First Lord of the Admiralty is an Irishman [Lord Carson]. Yet no one has ever brought in a bill to give home rule to England!

  John Hay Beith

  Home, Army, Sea

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• In New Haven, Conn., when I was growing up, there were two sorts of Irish. There were the "drugstore cowboy" micks, who hung around the Elm Street poolroom over Longley's Lunch. And there were the earnest young Irishmen who fought their way up from the Grand Avenue saloonkeeper backgrounds of their fathers, went through Yale Law School, and have now found high place by the preferment of local politics or in the teaching profession.

  James T. Farrell

  Growing Up, Father, Book

  JAMES T. FARRELL (1938). “STUDS LONIGAN”

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• The Irishman in English literature may be said to have been born with an apology in his mouth.

  James Connolly

  Apology, Literature, Mouths

  James Connolly (1971). “Labour in Irish History”, p.22, Lulu.com

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• 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

  War, Tomorrow, Left Handed

  "Paul Ryan Mocks ‘War On Women’ At Private Fundraiser". www.huffingtonpost.com. October 19, 2012.

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

  Anna Pavlova

  Paddy, Jocks, Scots

  4 Copy quote

• You may have noticed there are three things an Irishman always puts his soul in: his religion, his sports, and his politics. If you ever find an Irishman who is wishy-washy on any one of those, you can make up your mind to it he is not the true article at all.

  Mary Deasy

  Sports, Soul, Mind

  Mary Deasy (1948). “The Hour of Spring”

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• The poor silly-clever Irishman takes off his hat to God's Englishman.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Clever, Silly, Hats

  1904 Larry Doyle. John Bull's Other Island, act 1.

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• In other words, the problem of empire-building is essentially mystical. It must somehow foster the impression that a man is great in the degree that his nation is great; that a German as such is superior to a Belgian as such; an Englishman, to an Irishman; an American, to a Mexican: merely because the first-named countries are in each case more powerful than their comparatives. And people who have no individual stature whatever are willing to accept this poisonous nonsense because it gives them a sense of importance without the trouble of any personal effort.

  Felix Morley

  Country, Powerful, Men

  9 Copy quote

• I was born in the island of Ireland. I have Irish traits in me - we don't all have the traits of what came from Scotland, there is the celtic factor... and I am an Irishman because you cannot be an Ulsterman without being an Irishman.

  Ian Paisley

  Islands, Scotland, Celtic

  "Unionist Politics and the Politics of Unionism Since the Anglo-Irish Agreement". Book by Feargal Cochrane, 1997.

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• 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

  Men, Had Enough, Looks

  LEON URIS (1976). “TRINITY”

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• 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

  Communication, Heart, History

  41 Copy quote

• More Irishmen died fighting for Britain in World War I than died fighting against her in all of Ireland's bids for independence combined.

  David Frum

  War, Fighting, History

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• You ran away from an adorable Irishman who wanted to se you naked?

  Christine Warren

  Adorable, Naked, Wanted

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• On golfer Rory McIlroy's collapse in the final round of the 2011 Masters: We had hoped to compare the young Northern Irishman to the great Masters champions but instead had to reach for the compendium of great golfing train wrecks.

  Matt Dickinson

  Failure, Train Wrecks, Champion

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• I'll tell you what you can expect from an Irishman named Wellington whose father was a bookmaker. You can expect that anything he says or writes may be repeated aloud in your own home in front of your children. You can believe he was taught to love and respect all mankind, but to fear no man.

  Wellington Mara

  Children, Father, Believe

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• The only census of the senses, so far as I am aware, that ever before made them more than five, was the Irishman's reckoning of seven senses. I presume the Irishman's seventh sense was common sense; and I believe that the possession of that virtue by my countrymen-I speak as an Irishman.

  Lord Kelvin

  Believe, Science, Common Sense

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• Pain seems to be easier, or melancholy seems to be easier to portray in a character. I don't know if that's because I'm a human being or because I'm an Irishman or both.

  Colin Farrell

  Pain, Character, Melancholy

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