Last Updated on: 11th August 2021, 04:36 pm
Rain is also very difficult to film, particularly in Ireland because it’s quite fine, so fine that the Irish don’t even acknowledge that it exists. -Alan Parker
We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English. -Winston Churchill
All the world’s a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed. -Sean O’Casey
You know it is summer in Ireland when the rain gets warmer. -Hal Roach
When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious. -Edna O’Brien
We are bound to lose Ireland in consequence of years of cruelty, stupidity and misgovernment and I would rather lose her as a friend than as a foe. -William E. Gladstone
Put an Irishman on the spit and you can always get another Irishman to turn him. -George Bernard Shaw
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
The Irish do not want anyone to wish them well; they want everyone to wish their enemies ill. -Harold Nicolson
Eternal is the fact that the human creature born in Ireland and brought up in its air is Irish. I have lived for twenty years in Ireland and for seventy -two in England; but the twenty came first and in Britain I am still a foreigner and shall die one. -George Bernard Shaw
We may have bad weather in Ireland, but the sun shines in the hearts of the people and that keeps us all warm. -Marianne Williamson
There is no language like the Irish for soothing and quieting. -John Millington Synge
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. -William Butler Yeats
The legend goes that St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland. I was thinking… that must be hard to put all the tiny seatbelts on all the snakes. -Ellen DeGeneres
The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad, For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad. -Gilbert K. Chesterton
Out of Ireland have we come, great hatred, little room, maimed us at the start. I carry from my mother’s womb a fanatic heart. -William Butler Yeats
Liam Neeson quote: Some mornings you wake up and think, gee I look handsome today. Other…
Some mornings you wake up and think, gee I look handsome today. Other days I think, what am I doing in the movies? I wanna go back to Ireland and drive a forklift. -Liam Neeson
Why should Ireland be treated as a geographical fragment of England – Ireland is not a geographical fragment, but a nation. -Charles Stewart Parnell
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
Ireland is a great country to die or be married in. -Elizabeth Bowen
But I will say that living in Ireland has changed the cadence and fullness of speech, since the Irish love words and use as many of them in a sentence as possible -Anne McCaffrey
The problem with Ireland is that it’s a country full of genius, but with absolutely no talent. -Hugh Leonard
Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry. -W. H. Auden
I find that I sent wolves not shepherds to govern Ireland, for they have left me nothing but ashes and carcasses to reign over! -Elizabeth I
Ireland is a fruitful mother of genius, but a barren nurse. -John Boyle O’Reilly
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
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
I know of two tragic histories in the world – that of Ireland, and that of Macedonia. Both of them have been deprived and tormented -Roger Casement
The Irish are a fair people: They never speak well of one another. -Samuel Johnson
Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy. -William Butler Yeats
Among the best traitors Ireland has ever had, Mother Church ranks at the very top, a massive obstacle in the path to equality and freedom. She has been a force for conservatism… to ward off threats to her own security and influence. -Bernadette Devlin
In Ireland the inevitable never happens and the unexpected constantly occurs. -John Pentland Mahaffy
Dublin university contains the cream of Ireland: Rich and thick. -Samuel Beckett
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
If a man who can’t count finds a four leaf clover, is he lucky? -Stanislaw Lem
If a man who cannot count finds a four -leaf clover, is he entitled to happiness? -Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
My father was totally Irish, and so I went to Ireland once. I found it to be very much like New York, for it was a beautiful country, and both the women and men were good -looking. -James Cagney
There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. -Oscar Wilde
To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart. -Daniel Patrick Moynihan
The British Government has no right in Ireland, never had any right in Ireland, and never can have any right in Ireland. -James Connolly
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
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
At Leeds I’ve tried to concentrate on my club form, but you get caught up in all the World Cup fever once you come back to Ireland and see all the Irish boys again. -Robbie Keane
Ireland is where strange tales begin and happy endings are possible. -Charles Haughey
Love is never defeated, and I could add, the history of Ireland proves it. -Pope John Paul II
Geographically, Ireland is a medium -sized rural island that is slowly but steadily being consumed by sheep. -Dave Barry
For me, diversity is not a value. Diversity is what you find in Northern Ireland. Diversity is Beirut. Diversity is brother killing brother. Where diversity is shared – where I share with you my difference – that can be valuable. But the simple fact that we are unlike each other is a terrifying notion. I have often found myself in foreign settings where I became suddenly aware that I was not like the people around me. That, to me, is not a pleasant discovery. -Richard Rodriguez
In Egypt the staff was rendered as a shepherd’s crook that was a symbol for the pharaohs, the Druids of Egypt. The pharaohs wore the serpent on their headgear and the serpent was the symbol of the Magi of Ireland, the Naddreds, or Druids. -Michael Tsarion
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
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
I joined the British Army because she stood between Ireland and an enemy common to our civilization, and I would not have her (Britain) say that she defended us while we did nothing at home but pass resolutions. -Francis Ledwidge
A personal highlight was probably when we got a No. 1 in the U.K. and when the album went to No. 1 in America. The top four that week was us, Adele, Guns N’ Roses and Bruce Springsteen. It was ridiculous seeing those names there. Being the first band from the U.K. and Ireland to go to America and debut at No. 1 is just unbelievable. -Niall Horan
An independent Ireland would see its own independence in jeopardy the moment it saw the independence of Britain seriously threatened. Mutual self -interest would make the peoples of these two islands, if both independent, the closest possible allies in a moment of real national danger to either. -Eamon de Valera
We have long had emigration in Ireland. But the nature of emigration has changed. With ferries to Britain and the continent, as well as air travel, emigration isn’t the cutoff it used to be. In addition, some of our young people are being educated to levels beyond our present capacity to provide the jobs they are qualified to do. So they go abroad. Many want to come back, especially when they have children they would want to be raised in the Irish society and in the Irish educational system. -Mary Robinson
The way forward is by building political support for republican and democratic objectives across Ireland and by winning support for these goals internationally. -Gerry Adams
To be rhymed to death as is said to be done in Ireland. -Philip Sidney
My partner Dan Ireland wants me to direct, and I read a lot of scripts – some good enough that I could see myself. But then it’s like, so what? Who cares? Let someone else direct it. -Vincent D’Onofrio
Thanks to the European Union, Ireland has a much more open climate of discussion and debate, as you can see in the media. It means that we are a more questioning society, perhaps more honestly prepared to address serious issues and problems, more open to the idea that different viewpoints should be heard and respected. -Mary Robinson
I’ve been asked why does Ireland produce so many great musicians, and the answer is it doesn’t. When you count the great musicians Ireland has given the world in the last 20 years, you can do it on one hand. -Roddy Doyle
That feeds anger, and I mean when we went and at last thank heavens got towards peace in Northern Ireland we went for justice within Northern Ireland as well as using security well, as well as a political settlement, but surely that is the lesson. -Clare Short
When I was a kid, if you didn’t speak Irish, you really wanted to. And you played Gaelic games and you didn’t pay any attention to what was happening in the outside world, because really, the – Ireland was the center of the universe. And I don’t think that’s the case anymore, although, admittedly, it is the center of the universe. -Roddy Doyle
It was a chance encounter with a biotech entrepreneur from Ireland that got me started as an entrepreneur in India, because I partnered this Irish company in setting up India’s first biotech company. -Kiran Mazumdar -Shaw
What is unique about Drogheda is the very large number of Protestants in the garrison and the fact that it’s commanded, by and large, by Englishmen, who have come over from the English Civil War and are fighting in Ireland, and Cromwell is extraordinarily savage against these… Drogheda, after all, was a Protestant -Ronald Hutton
I don’t think we in Ireland have to follow slavishly what other countries have done. Ireland has its own strengths – in family life, in the local community, in the concept of meitheal, a very traditional form of cooperation in rural Ireland. Three or four or five neighbors get together, exchanging labor, farm equipment, and so on. There are strong solidarity overtones. That tradition is being translated today into community self -development. -Mary Robinson
…I will praise the English climate till I die—even if I die of the English climate. There is no weather so good as English weather. Nay, in a real sense there is no weather at all anywhere but in England. In France you have much sun and some rain; in Italy you have hot winds and cold winds; in Scotland and Ireland you have rain, either thick or thin; in America you have hells of heat and cold, and in the Tropics you have sunstrokes varied by thunderbolts. But all these you have on a broad and brutal scale, and you settle down into contentment or despair. -Gilbert K. Chesterton
When you travel the world, you have to watch and you have to listen. We’re not going to come in to Ireland without an understanding that there’s a history that’s very sensitive. -Chuck D
I’ve only been to Ireland once, and I felt I would wake up with voices in my head, almost like music, and that if I were a songwriter, I would be very inspired. -Steven Morrissey
I’m very keenly aware that there aren’t very many women writing literary fiction in Ireland and so that gives me a sense that what I say matters, in some small way. -Anne Enright
I do wish I could write like some of the American women, who can be clever and heartfelt and hopeful; people like Lorrie Moore and Jennifer Egan. But Ireland messed me up too much, I think, so I can’t. -Anne Enright
In later years, it was common, and I was guilty in this respect, to question the motives of those who joined the new British armies at the outbreak of the Great War, but it must, in their honour and fairness to their memories, be said that they were motivated by the highest purpose, and died in their tens of thousands in Flanders and Gallipoli, believing that they were giving their lives in the cause of human liberty everywhere, including Ireland. -Sean Lemass
Ireland unfree shall never be at peace -Patrick Pearse
Ireland. Great for the spirit – very bad for the body. -Hugh Dancy
For a startling period of my life, I reported the Troubles in Ireland for the BBC. I lived in Dublin and was called out to all sorts of incidents that, if taken together, add up to a war – bombings, assassinations, riots, shootings, robberies, jailbreaks, kidnappings, and sieges. -Frank Delaney
My grandfather was from outside of Moscow, and my grandmother, although some of her family were French, was from Odessa. They met as immigrants in New York in the early ’20s. My mother’s family came over from Ireland generations ago. -Alexis Denisof
England and Ireland may flourish together. The world is large enough for both of us. Let it be our care not to make ourselves too little for it. -Edmund Burke
For investor confidence, it is important that there is certainty about the future of Ireland in E.U. -Jose Manuel Barroso
Ireland has made its choice for the future and it has chosen the version of Irishness it will build. I know, and I will work with head and heart to be part of it with all of you in creating that future one in which all of us can be part of and part of us too. -Michael D. Higgins
Membership in the European Community, now the European Union, has enabled Ireland to re -find its sense of participation – cultural, political, social – at the European level. I think that also opens up possibilities for Ireland as a European country to look outward – to look particularly, for example, at countries to which a lot of Irish people emigrated, to our links – our human links – with the United States, with Canada, with Australia, with New Zealand. And to look also, because of our history, at our links to the developing countries. -Mary Robinson
It is tradition in Ireland that you’re given money for your first communion. -Roma Downey
Everybody gets too drunk sometimes; and even if everybody didn’t, I have gotten too drunk sometimes. I haven’t hurt anybody. In Ireland we drink a lot. It’s part of our culture. I like drinking. I don’t think it’s a bad thing. -Andrea Corr
In more static societies, like Ireland, you can tell where a person is from by their surname, or where their grandparents are from. -Anne Enright
Membership in the European Community, now the European Union, has helped Ireland to take its place as a European country with all the member states, including Britain. It has therefore helped the maturing of a good bilateral relationship with Britain, lifting part of the burden of history. -Mary Robinson
Idioms are a big thing in Ireland. They want to fill the time, to show how good they are at talk – it’s a talk -off -Dylan Moran
Both sides of my family had come from Ireland in the 19th century for the same reason: There was nothing to eat over there. Since then, I’ve tried to make up for the potato famine by making the potato the only vegetable that passes these lips. -Art Donovan
When the problems in Northern Ireland started, it was not a question of Protestantism or Catholicism, because the Catholic church was the only church at that time -it was a nationalist conflict. -Harri Holkeri
But the most horrible spot …. lies….immediately south west of Oxford Road and is known as Little Ireland. The race that lives in these ruinous cottages, behind broken windows, mended with oilskin, sprung doors, and rotten door -posts, or in dark, wet cellars, in measureless filth and stench….must surely have reached the lowest stage of humanity. -Friedrich Engels
In Ireland we have a very old saying, When you can see the mountains it’s going to rain and when you can’t see the mountains it’s raining. -David Allen
The last 15 years we had one of the biggest economic booms. But I think a few bubbles have burst in a few countries. So we are all going through the same things. But let’s say Ireland, in the ’70s and the ’80s was tough, but if you grow up with a tough background it makes you strong. -Gavin Friday
But one of the most fantastic things about Ireland and Dublin is that the pubs are like Paris and the cafe culture. And Dublin, in many ways, is a pub culture. -Hugh Dancy
The airline industry is full of bullshitters, liars and drunks. We excel at all three in Ireland. -Michael O’Leary
The French selectors never do anything by halves; for the first international of the season against Ireland they dropped half the three -quarter line. -Nigel Starmer -Smith
We moved to Ireland when I was two and we settled in Killarney, Co Kerry. Where we were living in Germany is very industrial and very grey and my parents wanted to have countryside around for my sister and I to grow up in. -Michael Fassbender
The ending of partition was inevitable because Ireland was one nation by history and tradition , by facts of race, geography, and economy -Seamus Costello
Whoop it up for liberty! After Ireland is free, says the patriot who won’t touch socialism, we will protect all classes, and if you won’t pay your rent you will be evicted same as now. But the evicting party, under command of the sheriff, will wear green uniforms and the Harp without the Crown, and the warrant turning you out on the roadside will be stamped with the arms of the Irish Republic. Now, isn’t that worth fighting for? -James Connolly
But while Ireland is not free I remain a rebel, unconverted and unconvertible. There is no word strong enough for it. I am pledged as a rebel, an unconvertible rebel, to the one thing – a free and independent Republic. -Constance Markievicz
I’m disrespectful towards authority. I think the prime minister of Ireland is a gobshite. -Michael O’Leary
You cannot conquer Ireland; you cannot extinguish the Irish passion for freedom. If our deed has not been sufficient to win freedom, then our children will win it by a better deed. -Patrick Pearse
As long as Ireland is unfree the only honourable attitude for Irish men, women to have is an attitude of rebellion. -Patrick Pearse
While my hand is on the stick, my feet on the rudder, and my eyes on the compass, this consciousness, like a winged messenger, goes out to visit the waves below, testing the warmth of water, the speed of wind, the thickness of intervening clouds. It goes north to the glacial coasts of Greenland, over the horizon to the edge of dawn, ahead to Ireland, England, and the continent of Europe, away through space to the moon and stars, always returning, unwillingly, to the mortal duty of seeing that the limbs and muscles have attended their routine while it was gone. -Charles Lindbergh
The republic stands for truth and honour. For all that is noblest in our race. By truth and honour, principle and sacrifice alone will Ireland be free. -Liam Mellows
I’ll wear no convicts uniform nor meekly serve my time that Britain might brand Irelands fight 800 years of crime. -Bobby Sands
They want to derail peace because they want to plunge Northern Ireland back into armed conflict. -Peter Mandelson
My main influences – I loved art. I sounds a little pretentious to say I was into art but I liked drawing. I liked music; music was my outlet from day one. I was giving you an image of Ireland being this dull, grey, massive unemployment, not much going on and the future was the dull queue or – and, for me, the window of hope was music and books. So I fell in love with sort of T -Rex and David Bowie very young. They sort of said, “Hey. You don’t have to live in this north side of Dublin that’s all grey and depressed. You can be a spider and go to Mars.” -Gavin Friday
The United States of American business pays the second -highest business taxes in the world, 35 percent. Ireland pays 11 percent. Now, if you’re a business person, and you can locate any place in the world, then, obviously, if you go to the country where it’s 11 percent tax versus 35 percent, you’re going to be able to create jobs, increase your business, make more investment, et cetera. I want to cut that business tax. I want to cut it so that businesses will remain in the United States of America and create jobs. -John McCain
On the business side, innovative leaders are beginning to wake up to the fact that this non -stop work trend is bad for business: Google Ireland tested a program called Dublin Goes Dark, where employees turned over their phones at the end of each work day. It seems like a sea change is ahead. -Katrina Onstad
Indeed, American companies make three times as much profits from their investment in one E.U. country, Ireland, than they do from all their investments in China. -John Bruton
The first thing to recognize is how fortunate Ireland is to be an island off the west coast of Europe, and therefore helped by the prevailing winds to escape the effects of acid rain and other problems. We were also lucky not to have had the same kind of industrial revolution and industry as some other countries. Our problem now is to create employment, but to do it in ways that value our environment. -Mary Robinson
I grew up in Ireland, so I do not have a lot of respect for most politicians. -Jasmine Guinness
I am a proud product of Irish golf and the Golfing Union of Ireland and am hugely honoured to have come from very rich Irish sporting roots I am also a proud Ulsterman who grew up in Northern Ireland. That is my background and always will be. -Rory McIlroy
Funnily enough, Northern Ireland is a great example of where politics can win over conflict. The decision to down arms and follow a political path would have been unthinkable once. It shows just what is possible. -James Nesbitt
I love our shared island, our shared Ireland and its core decency. I love it for its imagination and its celebration of the endless possibilities for our people. -Michael D. Higgins
It is absolutely no accident that the peace and reconciliation, and indeed the economic progress, that eluded us generation after generation for hundreds of years, has at last come to pass in an Ireland where the talents of women are now flooding every aspect of life as never before. -Mary McAleese
When the Internet arrived in Ireland… it was like having Amsterdam’s Red Light District in your own living room. -Tom Dunne
Ireland has a role to play in making the E.U. united and strong. -John Bruton
We must encourage energy conservation and sustainable development. Young people are the ones who are most environmentally conscious in Ireland, so that to some extent they are educating their parents. They are tackling issues of waste disposal and so on. The schools help, because they put a lot of stress on environmental awareness. -Mary Robinson
The field was even greener than my boy’s mind had pictured it. In later years, friends of ours visited Ireland and said the grass there was plenty green all right, but that not even the Emerald Isle itself was as green as the grass that grew in Ebbets Field. -Duke Snider
Economic polarization is also occurring between creditor and debtor nations. This issplitting the eurozone between Germany, France and the Netherlands in the creditor camp, against Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Italy falling deeper into debt, unemployment and austerity – followed by emigration and capital flight. -Michael Hudson
I mean I grew up in Ireland, so one would have to be consciously blinkered not to have reflected on the issue of political violence because that was the story since I was 19 years old or 20. -Neil Jordan
I did find New Zealand similar to Ireland. The people, obviously. I found that, ironically, although these two countries were very far away from each other, their humor was so similar and their outlook on things was quite similar as well. -Saoirse Ronan
A possibility is that we see more and more leverage, and credit -to -GDP ratios rise once more to even higher levels; eventually the banking systems of all advanced economies reach magnitudes of 500 percent, 1000 percent or more of GDP, so that every economy starts to have financial systems that resemble recent cases like Switzerland, Ireland, Iceland, or Cyprus. That might be a very fragile world to live in. -Alan M. Taylor
I know it feels like two steps forward and one step back, but we are making progress. In my lifetime, I have lived through one World War, I have lived through the end of Apartheid in South Africa, the pulling down of the Berlin Wall. I have experienced what I never thought I would have experienced, which is a pretty workable peace in Northern Ireland, and I experienced a unified Europe – until the Conservative government got its hands on the idea that in order to appease a few back -benchers they would hold a referendum, what a disastrous idea. -Patrick Stewart
I think Scotland’s got its own issues, in some ways similar to Northern Ireland with sectarianism, which has been a long -running sore. All the issues of land ownership, development resources, poverty, alcoholism and violence, all these things. -Irvine Welsh
I felt when I was elected that the most important task on this island [Ireland] was to extend the hand of friendship right across the board to the people of Northern Ireland, to have the beginnings of a real peace process. In consequence, although I have no role in intergovernmental talks or political discussions, that would be my very top priority. -Mary Robinson
Ireland is such a young society. The British were the ruling class up until they left about a hundred years ago, and we’ve been trying to work out what our class hierarchy is ever since. -Tana French
In my teens, I joined the Parachute Regiment. I jumped out of lots of airplanes, as much as the Government budget would allow us to. I did two active tours of duty: Northern Ireland, and then the Falklands war. -Mark Burnett
I would like to break out of this “dark, brooding” image, cause I’m actually not like that at all. In Ireland, brooding is a term we use for hens. A brooding hen is supposed to lay eggs. Everytime somebody says “He’s dark and brooding” I think: “He’s about to lay an egg”. -Gabriel Byrne
I know tolerably well what Ireland was, but have a very imperfect idea of what Ireland is. -John Stuart Mill
I used to have an eBay addiction. I was really good at selling stuff. My sister needed to get to a funeral in Ireland – the airlines were on strike – so I listed her on eBay: damsel in distress. Guys were outbidding guys to be the hero and help her. A guy who owned a helicopter won. -James Blunt
My mother was one of the most beautiful women, I have to say, of her generation. She was absolutely lovely. She was a very, extremely sensitive, Irish actress. She came from Belfast, Northern Ireland, and she came to London, and she was sort of discovered by several people. -Angela Lansbury
In Celtic Ireland the name Leo was Lugh, another solar hero and mystic. In Wales he was Llew, to the Romans Lugus, to the Sumerians Lughal. Its not the same dude on walkabout, it’s the Astrological sign of Leo. In the Christian iconography we have one of the Evangelists represented by a Lion. In the Nativity scenes we see 4 animals around the cradle of the Son/Sun king. One of these is also a Lion. Christians probably believe that there was one in the area and just happened to wander into the inn to take a peek at sleeping Jesus. Good thing it wasn’t very hungry. -Michael Tsarion
Roughly 1 in 6 Americans have Irish blood. I’d say it’s probably safe to assume that the average Irish -American who only comes out on St. Patrick’s Day has no idea of the sort of economic powerhouse Ireland has become. -Scott McClellan
Ireland is a little country which raises all the great questions. -Gustave de Beaumont
There can be no perfect Europe in which Ireland is denied even the least of its national rights. -James Connolly
Jonny Evans plays sort of international football with Northern Ireland -Phil Thompson
Dublin people think they are the center of the world and the center of Ireland. And they don’t realize that people have to leave Ireland to get work, and they look down on people who do. -Martin McDonagh
The shot Irishmen will now take their places beside Emmet and the Manchester Martyrs in Ireland, and beside the heroes of Poland and Sérbia and Belgium in Europe; and nothing in heaven or earth can prevent it. -George Bernard Shaw
My background is Protestant so I benefited from the great Bible teaching that was provided there… I did love the more culturally classical things, like Irish music, which I think is some of the most congregational -style music when you think of… ‘St. Patrick’s Breastplate’ (and) ‘Danny Boy.’ These are traditional Irish melodies. I think being brought up there (Ireland) gave me a sense of melody that is very attuned to congregational singing. -Keith Getty
A Russian should rejoice if Poland, the Baltic Provinces, Finland, Armenia, should be separated, freed from Russia; so with an Englishman in regard to Ireland, India and other possessions; and each should help to do this, because the greater the state, the more wrong and cruel is its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded. Therefore, if we really wish to be what we profess to be, we must not only cease our present desire for the growth of the state, but we must desire its decrease, its weakening, and help this forward with all our might. -Leo Tolstoy
I’m especially grateful that they’re here at a time when the rest of Ireland is focused on the final round of the Six Nations rugby tournament and the last match of the legendary Brian O’Driscoll. -Barack Obama
I think Catholicism took root very quickly in Ireland because it’s a very superstitious religion, the holy ghost, the holy spirit, it has a goddess, very visual, the music. -Conor McPherson
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
like any Irish mother, I am scar tissue to the bone. -Jennifer Stone
If Irish or Italian culture dies in America it really isn’t that big a deal. They will still exist in Italy and Ireland. Not so with us. There is no other place. North America is our old country. -Janet Campbell Hale
Ah, Ireland… That damnable, delightful country, where everything that is right is the opposite of what it ought to be. -Benjamin Disraeli
My grandfather was a really, really tough no -nonsense factory worker who emigrated from Ireland in about 1900 to Bridgeport, Conn. He had a big effect on me. Those guys who took a great leap out into what they knew not were the ones who were the real stars, the real heroes. -Brian Dennehy
The Irish question is this: Do the Irish know the answer to everything? … And the answer to that is that we know fifteen different answers to every question. All of them right. -Olivia Robertson
Pomegranate Soup is glorious, daring and delightful. I adored the Iranian sisters, Marjan, Bahar and Layla, who are looking to build a life, start a business and find love in a place so far from home. Ireland has never been more beautiful – the perfect setting for this story filled with humor, hope and possibility. -Adriana Trigiani
The English should give Ireland home rule – and reserve the motion picture rights. -Will Rogers
Being Irish and a citizen of the world, has made me truly appreciate Irish culture, music and history. Whether you’re first, second generation Irish or even with no connection to Ireland, you should visit in 2013 for a unique experience. -Liam Neeson
I have often heard it said that the Irish are too ready to forgive. It is a noble failing. -Katharine Tynan
I played in rock bands in college and then right out of college I moved over to Europe and lived in Ireland for about four years playing in indie rock bands. I love and miss being in a band, I still am in a band but pursuing that as a career I definitely missed it but I felt like that ship had sailed. -Bill Watterson
Up in the north of Scotland, a lot of the villages are completely Viking names. A lot of Vikings came down and settled in Scotland and in Ireland. And a lot of them didn’t, but they took plenty of us with them – mostly the chicks. -Gerard Butler
The lower interest rates fueled housing and consumption booms in countries such as Spain and Ireland. At the same time, Germany, struggling with the burdens of reunification, tightened its belt and became more competitive. All this led to a wide divergence in economic performance. Europe became divided into creditor and debtor countries. -George Soros
Irish people have a trick of overstatement, at which one ceases to wince as one grows older. -Katharine Tynan
DEINOTHERIUM, n. An extinct pachyderm that flourished when the Pterodactyl was in fashion. The latter was a native of Ireland, its name being pronounced Terry Dactyl or Peter O’Dactyl, as the man pronouncing it may chance to have heard it spoken or seen it printed. -Ambrose Bierce
Ireland is a small but insuppressible island half an hour nearer the sunset than Great Britain. -Tom Kettle
Well, it has done terrifying things. Religious ideas are inflammatory in a way that I find difficult to understand. There are very few wars over the theory of relativity. Very few heated arguments, for that matter. Whereas, in Northern Ireland, they are killing one another over religion. -Quentin Crisp
The British leadership has acknowledged that it only became possible to end the violence in North Ireland when it stopped thinking of the [Irish Republican Army] as “a terrorist organization” and began treating it as a political actor with genuine grievances that deserved to be addressed. -Richard A. Falk
I was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland and it is still home to me. My writing has taken me all over the world, but this is the place I come back to and the place where I find it easiest to write. -Michael Scott
We are always giving foreign names to very native things. If there is a thing that reeks of the glorious tradition of the old English tavern, it is toasted cheese. But for some wild reason we call it Welsh rarebit. I believe that what we call Irish stew might more properly be called English stew, and that it is not particularly familiar in Ireland. -Gilbert K. Chesterton
In Ireland every place you visit and every person you meet has a story. And they love to tell you their stories. Everyone is interested in everything; in a land of storytellers, you will never be bored. -Maeve Binchy
History, well taught, is the demythologising of the past… Take any important issue of our time – Northern Ireland, Nuclear Disarmament, Race, The Welfare State, South Africa – and it becomes impossible to seriously confront any of them without understanding their historical background. -Alan Bullock
The image of Ireland is projected as a male image in the acting world, similar to the way that the word of Ireland is male dominated. -Fionnula Flanagan
People think we are such great talkers, but there is so much silence in Ireland about certain issues. -Fionnula Flanagan
In the vast majority of cases the secret society symbolism hearkens from two places – Ireland and Egypt. -Michael Tsarion
The secret of my success is my mother, who was from Dublin. All my relations are in Dublin or in the west, or as I found out, we went to Rostrevor in Northern Ireland to film and I got out, while they changed cars around, and this man said to me: “You know you have cousins in this town? And they’re coming down to see you…” And so they did. I’m sorry we didn’t go to a lot more places, so that I could find a lot more cousins. So, that was good. It’s entirely because my father was also brought up in Dublin. So, that’s my link. -Judi Dench
Each poet probably has his or her own cupboard of magnets. For some, it is cars; for others, works of art, or certain patterns of form or sound; for others, certain stories or places, Philip Levine’s Detroit, Gwendolyn Brooks’s Chicago, Seamus Heaney’s time -tunneled, familied Ireland. -Jane Hirshfield
In England especially, poetry’s woven into the background fabric of society. And in Ireland, it’s in the foreground. The place of the poet in Irish society is enormous. If you say you’re a poet in Ireland, you’d better know what you’re doing, because the standard and the expectations are incredibly high. -David Whyte
There’s a certain status to suffering in Ireland, that the person who – if you’re sitting around a table, the person with the greatest status is the person who had the most horrible thing happen to them most recently. -Michael Lewis
We’ll be launching the new public prosecution service in Northern Ireland tomorrow. I’ll be doing it in Belfast tomorrow. This is an entirely new era, in which criminal justice now exercised on an equal basis, not the old basis in which community division was a feature. -Peter Hain