Quotes & Sayings About Ireland
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Top Ireland Quotes
If the interest rate the country pays on its debt is higher than the growth of nominal GDP (that's real GDP plus inflation) that debt ratio automatically goes up - unless the government runs a surplus in the budget excluding interest. Conversely, when the interest rate a country pays on its debt is below its growth rate, the ratio automatically drops, unless there's a deficit in the budget, excluding interest. The latter scenario - having interest rates below the growth rate - is like having the wind at your back. And that's the situation Spain, Ireland and Portugal should all be in this year. Italy is close. — Anonymous
Consider Ireland ... You have a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, and an alien Church, and in addition the weakest executive in the world. That is the Irish Question. — Benjamin Disraeli
The prime minister of Ireland will be celebrating St. Patrick's Day at the White House. So finally the Secret Service agents will have a drinking buddy. — Conan O'Brien
Look at every territorial dispute you care to mention. Northern Ireland, for instance." "Religion in that case," Jamie ventured. "Not just. Religion was the badge of identity, but it wasn't really about whether you went to Mass or to a tub-thumping Protestant chapel. It was a result of the movement of people. The Protestant planters - many of them Scots - replaced the native Irish, remember? Movement of people again. — Alexander McCall Smith
In the summer of 2007, I was sitting in a studio in Dublin, debating with a lay spokesman of the Roman Catholic Church who turned out to be the only believing Christian on a discussion panel of five people. He was a perfectly nice and rather modest logic-chopping polemicist, happy enough to go for a glass of refreshment after the program, and I suddenly felt a piercing stab of pity for him. A generation ago in Ireland, the Church did not have to lower itself in this way. It raised its voice only slightly, and was instantly obeyed by the Parliament, the schools, and the media. It could and did forbid divorce, contraception, the publication of certain books, and the utterance of certain opinions. Now it is discredited and in decline. Its once-absolute doctrines appear ridiculous: — Christopher Hitchens
Allegorical stories of saints battling with giants, monsters and demons may be interpreted as symbolizing the Christian's fight against paganism. At Bwlch Rhiwfelen (Denbigh) St Collen fought and killed a cannibal giantess, afterwards washing away the blood-stains in a well later known as Ffynnon Gollen. In Ireland, the tales of saints slaying giant serpents may have the same meaning; alternatively they (or some of them) may refer to early sightings of genuine water monsters. St Barry banished a serpent from a mountain into Lough Lagan (Roscommon), and a holy well sprang up where the saint's knee touched the ground. — Colin Bord
Growing up in Ireland, when my family received important news, good or bad, we would boil water and make tea. It was the first thing I did when my father died in 1984. This ritual allowed me a moment to take in the enormity of what had happened. — Roma Downey
The west and southwest of Ireland bore the brunt of the famine. Those areas, including Mayo, Sligo, Roscommon, Galway, Clare, and Cork, were the poorest regions of the island, and the most dependent on subsistence farming. Not coincidentally, these were also the areas that Catholic Irish had been sent to during the Protestant plantation. — Ryan Hackney
Any good history begins in strangeness. The past should not be comfortable. The past should not a familar echo of the present, for if it is familar why revist it? The past should be so strange that you wonder how you and people you know and love could come from such a time. — Richard White
It must not be thought, however, that in pagan Ireland Fairyland was altogether conceived as a Hades or place of the dead. We have already seen that in some of its types and aspects it was inherently nothing of the sort; as when, for example, it came to be confused with the Land of the Gods. In all likelihood these separate paradises and deadlands of a nature so various were the result of the stratified beliefs of successive races dwelling in the same region. A conquering race would scarcely credit that its heroes would, after death, betake themselves to the deadland of the beaten and enslaved aborigines. The gods of vanquished races might be conceived as presiding over spheres of the dead for which their victors would have nothing but contempt, and which, because of that very contempt, might come to be conceived as hells or places of a debased and grovelling kind, pestiferous regions which only the spirits of despised "natives" or the undesirable might inhabit. — Lewis Spence
More people died as a result of the tiny abortive Easter Uprising against British rule in Ireland (1916) than died as a result of political violence in Germany during the entire National Socialist revolution. — Adolf Hitler
What I discovered all over Ireland is that people living simple lives by the sea or in the remote countryside seem a lot calmer than city folk with their iPads and their Android phones. — James Nesbitt
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
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead. — James Joyce
Food cost rather than the absolute absence of food can often be the key factor in shortages and possible starvation. During the height of the Irish Potato Famine in 1845, Ireland was actually exporting food to England. The peasants starved because they could not afford to buy food at the local prices, enhanced by the loss of the potato crop. There was enough food, in absolute terms, to keep everyone alive; they died because they had no money to buy it. — Peter Wadhams
A daughter of a King of Ireland, heard
A voice singing on a May Eve like this,
And followed half awake and half asleep,
Until she came into the Land of Faery,
Where nobody gets old and godly and grave,
Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise,
Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue.
And she is still there, busied with a dance
Deep in the dewy shadow of a wood,
Or where stars walk upon a mountain-top. — W.B.Yeats
In a move that will remain in Irish annals as a stigma comparable to the potato famine, the Dublin government succumbed to ECB blackmail: make the German creditors of Ireland's commercial banks whole, even a bank that was closed down and thus no longer systemically important for Ireland's financial sector, or else. — Yanis Varoufakis
In Tasmania, an island the size of Ireland whose primeval forests astonished 19th-century Europeans, an incomprehensible ecological tragedy is being played out. — Richard Flanagan
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 old Victorian laws against homosexuality were still on the statute books until the early 1990s. As a gay man living in Ireland, I and people like me found it easy to feel less than citizens. — Colm Toibin
Yes, but also one of the problems for a novelist in Ireland is the fact that there are no formal manners. I mean some people have beautiful manners but there's no kind of agreed form of manners. — John McGahern
The English imposed their language on Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and they weren't terribly nice about it. — Howard Tomb
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
There is a feel about Galway you can wear around your shoulders like a cloak. It hangs in the air with its dampness; it walks the cobblestone streets and stands in the doorways of its gray stone buildings. It blows in with the mist from the Atlantic and lingers incessantly at every corner. I have never been able to walk the streets of Galway without feeling some unnamed presence accompanying me. — Claire Fullerton
And he got going from there to America. Worked his passage, I s'pose, like a lot more. And I heard he did well in America, too. Got married there. Had a family. But never came back. And you know why? 'Cause if he did, if he ever set foot in Ireland again, you know who'd be waiting for him, don't you?
That's right. The three of 'em. And their box. And the second time they'd make no mistake.
It is a much-overlooked fact that not all of the thousands who fled Ireland in former times did so to escape hunger, deprivation, and persecution. There were also those who went to escape the wrath of the Good People. Many stories illustrated this, the one here being typical. — Eddie Lenihan
Ah, Ireland ... That damnable, delightful country, where everything that is right is the opposite of what it ought to be. — Benjamin Disraeli
I live on an island called Ireland where most of the music is shite. I grew up listening to "Danny Boy"; I grew up hating Danny Boy, and all his siblings and his granny. "The pipes, the pipes are caw-haw-hawing." Anything with pipes or fiddles or even - forgive me, Paul - banjos, I detested. Songs of loss, of love, of going across the sea; songs of defiance and rebellion - I vomited on all of them. — Roddy Doyle
When you look at what I've done here, you see a consistent theme of reforms which is not driven by any dogma from across the water, but a radical agenda to make sure Northern Ireland's people enjoy equal opportunities, driven by the values of social justice. — Peter Hain
The reality is that the nationalist community in Northern Ireland were treated almost like animals by the unionist community. They were not treated like human beings. It was like the Nazis treatment of the Jews. — Alec Reid
My father's parents were Irish. Only a year before my father died, he and I went back to Ireland for a week to look at the old homestead. — John C. Hawkes
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
In my view, a united Ireland is inevitable, and it is certainly more likely than a voluntary coalition which doesn't include Sinn Fein. — Martin McGuinness
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
To be honest, I'm a bit of a snob now; give me a Four Seasons anywhere in the world and I'm happy. Also, they've just opened a Ritz-Carlton in County Wicklow, Ireland, which is stunning and has great views. — Joe Elliott
You aren't meant to be a prisoner. You're powerful and incredible."
"You've no' seen me in dragon form."
"I don't have to. I see the man before me now. — Donna Grant
I'll tell you what, it doesn't get more beautiful than the west of Ireland. Connemara and County Derry are quite stunning, really. — Matthew Goode
Throughout Ireland, there's a brilliant community of filmmakers and actors, and I guess there was always a lure to do some work in the place where I come from. — Jamie Dornan
There are more people of Irish descent in Boston and surrounding New England than there are in Ireland. — Anonymous
I wanted to make at least an effort to impress, so I found my best suit, a Primark special that looked like it had been ironed by a blind man — Jay Stringer
I want to be an inspirational model. I want people to look at me and say, 'Wow, she looks healthy.' — Ireland Baldwin
My ultimate dream would be for Derry City to become champions of an all-Ireland league in a united Ireland. — Martin McGuinness
As actors, you like to think about the luxury of having choices in your career, but for the most part you kind of take whatever comes your way and hope that you carved out something that you're proud of in the end. — Marin Ireland
We come bulletproof in Ireland. We're reared tough, and we fight. — Conor McGregor
Thady begins his memoirs of the Rackrent Family by dating MONDAY MORNING, because no great undertaking can be auspiciously commenced in Ireland on any morning but MONDAY MORNING. 'Oh, please God we live till Monday morning, we'll set the slater to mend the roof of the house. On Monday morning we'll fall to, and cut the turf. On Monday morning we'll see and begin mowing. On Monday morning, please your honour, we'll begin and dig the potatoes,' etc.
All the intermediate days, between the making of such speeches and the ensuing Monday, are wasted: and when Monday morning comes, it is ten to one that the business is deferred to THE NEXT Monday morning. The Editor knew a gentleman, who, to counteract this prejudice, made his workmen and labourers begin all new pieces of work upon a Saturday. — Maria Edgeworth
Many writers from the suburbs of history, such as Ireland and Argentina, produced more original work than their counterparts in the United States; they still seem to. — Pankaj Mishra
She drank in the sight of him, the power, the virility, the sheer sexiness. She knew just how well those lips of his kissed, how gentle and coaxing his hands could be, and how mouth-watering his body was. — Donna Grant
Come, fix upon me that accusing eye.
I thirst for accusation. All that was sung.
All that was said in Ireland is a lie
Breed out of the contagion of the throng,
Saving the rhyme rats hear before they die. — William Butler Yeats
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
The airline industry is full of bullshitters, liars and drunks. We excel at all three in Ireland. — Michael O'Leary
You can take a man out of Ireland, but you can't take the Irishness out of the man. — Tyson Fury
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
It's so tough to get movies made in Ireland anymore. A whole generation of Irish filmmakers doesn't have the resources to get a movie made. — Ciaran Hinds
Irish demographics reveal two startling facts: There are around 70 million people worldwide who claim Irish descent, and Ireland today has barely half the population that it had 160 years ago, a decline unmatched in the modern world. These facts are explained and connected by the undeniable social reality of nineteenth-century Ireland - emigration. — Ryan Hackney
I always knew I belonged on the other side of the lens. — Kathy Ireland
In Ireland, there are the same fossils, the same shells and the same sea bodies, as appear in America, and some of them are found in no other part of Europe. — Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon
I know most of the photographers in Ireland. And if I don't want my photograph taken, they will leave me alone. — Saoirse Ronan
Ireland sober is Ireland stiff. Lord help you, Maria, full of grease, the load is with me! Your prayers. I sonht zo! Madammangut! — James Joyce
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
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
In Ireland, you go to someone's house, and she asks you if you want a cup of tea. You say no, thank you, you're really just fine. She asks if you're sure. You say of course you're sure, really, you don't need a thing. Except they pronounce it ting. You don't need a ting. Well, she says then, I was going to get myself some anyway, so it would be no trouble. Ah, you say, well, if you were going to get yourself some, I wouldn't mind a spot of tea, at that, so long as it's no trouble and I can give you a hand in the kitchen. Then you go through the whole thing all over again until you both end up in the kitchen drinking tea and chatting.
In America, someone asks you if you want a cup of tea, you say no, and then you don't get any damned tea.
I liked the Irish way better. — C.E. Murphy
The barbarian invasion put an end, for six centuries, to the civilization of western Europe. It lingered in Ireland until the Danes destroyed it in the ninth century; — Bertrand Russell
The diamond absolutes.
I am neither internee nor informer;
An inner emigre, grown long-haired
And thoughtful; a wood-kerne
Escaped from the massacre,
Taking protective colouring
From bole and bark, feeling
Every wind that blows;
Who, blowing up these sparks
For their meagre heat, have missed
The once-in-a-lifetime portent,
The comet's pulsing tose. — Seamus Heaney
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, in breadth, and for wholesomeness and serenity of climate, far surpasses Britain; for the snow scarcely ever lies there above three days: no man makes hay in the summer for winter's provision, or builds stables for his beasts of burden ... the island abounds in milk and honey. — Venerable Bede
When I hear traditional family values raised, I hear that effort once again to re-establish the man as head and master of his family. Who had the, not only the right, but the obligation to discipline his wife and children to keep them in line? — Patricia Ireland
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
Ireland is a land of poets and legends, of dreamers and rebels. All of these have music woven through and around them. Tunes for dancing or for weeping, for battle or for love. — Nora Roberts
I was elected by the women of Ireland, who instead of rocking the cradle, rocked the system. — Mary Robinson
Scurvy became a problem. This disease comes from a deficiency of vitamin C, and it causes the victim's connective tissue to break down. The Irish called scurvy black leg, because it made the blood vessels under the skin burst, giving a victim's limbs a black appearance. The cure for scurvy is fresh food - meat, vegetables, or fruit - none of which was available to the poor in Ireland. There — Ryan Hackney
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
My grandfather did not travel across 4,000 miles of the Atlantic Ocean to see this country overrun by immigrants. He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. — Stephen Colbert
The earliest witch-trial in the British Isles shows animal sacrifice. In 1324 in Ireland Lady Alice Kyteler 'was charged to haue nightlie conference with a spirit called Robin Artisson, to whom she sacrificed in the high waie .ix. red cocks'.[610] — Anonymous
After the spiritual powers, there is no thing in the world more unconquerable than the spirit of nationality. The spirit of nationality in Ireland will persist even though the mightiest of material powers be its neighbor. — George William Russell
When I grew up in Ireland in the seventies there was no such thing as therapy ... I mean we didn't even have cappuccinos until 1998! So for me music was therapy, it was also the place where one could speak about himself, where he was allowed to speak about his traumatic experiences. — Sinead O'Connor
That guy in the corner. Never tells the truth, as a matter of principle. Why answer a question, he says, if you can tell a good story instead? — Pete McCarthy
It wasn't so long ago that it was not popular to speak Gaelic in Ireland because the areas that Gaelic is spoken in were much poorer areas. — Enya
Music began playing and a woman walked into the room and stood beside a small band. She was dressed in a red Irish costume that hung to her ankles and it was laced at the bodice with a black cord. After giving a nod to the band, she sang a few Irish songs. But one song seemed to stand out to Rick and he stopped eating and listened.
Sure a little bit of Heaven fell from out the sky one day and it nestled on the ocean in a spot so far away. When the angels found it, sure it looked so sweet and fair, they said, "Suppose we leave it for it looks so peaceful there."
So they sprinkled it with stardust just to make the shamrocks grow. 'Tis the only place you'll find them no matter where you go. Then they dotted it with silver to make its lakes so grand and when they had it finished, sure they called it Ireland. — Linda Weaver Clarke
I came to Ireland 20 years ago as a student, hitch-hiking round for a week and staying in Dublin. — Greta Scacchi
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
There are two traditions in Northern Ireland. There are two main religious denominations. But there is only one true moral denomination. And it wants peace. — David Trimble
Sometimes, there's not an honest engagement of Ireland in Hollywood movies. — Ciaran Hinds
Wolfhounds helped kill off the wolves in Ireland. — Denis Leary
Three thousand additional troops from Ireland commanded — Jack Kelly
What the Danes left in Ireland were hens and weasels. And when the cock crows in the morning, the country people will always say 'It is for Denmark they are crowing. Crowing they are to be back in Denmark.' — Lady Gregory
Early Summer, loveliest season,
The world is being colored in.
While daylight lasts on the horizon,
Sudden, throaty blackbirds sing.
The dusty-colored cuckoo cuckoos.
"Welcome, summer" is what he says.
Winter's unimaginable.
The wood's a wickerwork of boughs.
Summer means the river's shallow,
Thirsty horses nose the pools.
Long heather spreads out on bog pillows.
White bog cotton droops in bloom.
Swallows swerve and flicker up.
Music starts behind the mountain.
There's moss and a lush growth underfoot.
Spongy marshland glugs and stutters.
Bog banks shine like ravens' wings.
The cuckoo keeps on calling welcome.
The speckled fish jumps; and the strong
Swift warrior is up and running.
A little, jumpy, chirpy fellow
Hits the highest note there is;
The lark sings out his clear tidings.
Summer, shimmer, perfect days. — Marie Heaney
It was great to work in Ireland because it's such a beautiful country, but it's not particularly easy to film in because the weather changes all the time. — Anjelica Huston
I am a war man in the day of war, but I am a peace man in the day of peace. — Michael Collins
When I used to model, the job description is 'shut up and pose.' There are people today who would really like me to go back to that old job description and 'just shut up and pose.' — Kathy Ireland
When boyhood's fire was in my blood
I read of ancient freemen
Of Greece and Rome who bravely stood
Three hundred men and three men
And then I prayed I yet might see
Our fetters rent in twain
And Ireland long a province be
A nation once again — Thomas Osborne Davis
In ancient Ireland the soul had but to stretch out its arms to fill them with beauty. Now all manner of ugliness besets the world. — Orna Ross
Ireland is a fruitful mother of genius, but a barren nurse. — John Boyle O'Reilly
...being a weatherman in Ireland is about the biggest scam going. — Rachel Friedman
Old, is it?" the man asks.
"Yes, very."
"Pre-war, is it?"
"Yes," I say. "If by war you mean the Norman invasion. — Garrett Carr
You can't swing a cat in Ireland without hitting a saint. — Ryan Hackney