Irish Poetry Quotes & Sayings

An essential element for good writing is a good ear: One must listen to the sound of one's own prose. — Barbara Tuchman

Desmond O'Grady is one of the senior figures in Irish
Literary life, exemplary in the way he has committed
himself over the decades to the vocation of poetry and
has lived selflessly for the art — Seamus Heaney

As much as possible, it is useful to think of all other beings as being just like me. Every living being strives for happiness. Every being wants to avoid all forms of suffering. They are not just objects or things to be used for our benefit. You know, Mahatma Gandhi once said: 'The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. — David Michie

Yes ... I love how the Irish are so comfortable with paradox that they revel in it. In fact, if you took it away from them, I suspect they would start gasping like fish out of water. No wonder their land's name, now removed from its Gaelic notions of abundance in 'eire,' evokes anger, or 'ire,' and yet also the rich, cooling green of a sea-colored jewel. A 'terrible beauty' indeed. They understand oppression and repression and explosion, but they remain a culture of faith-faith that creaks and groans and pulls, but is alive and never dull. And which urges them to art, to poetry, to song-these, too, are forms of action. Of passion. Of conviction. Yes, of love. — Carolyn Weber

My biggest poetic influences are probably 20th-century British and Irish poets. So I suppose I'm always listening for the music I associate with that poetry, the telling images, the brevity. I want to hear it in my own work as well as in the poetry I read. However, I think I'm generally more forgiving of other poets than myself. — David Starkey

Some of the songs I've made, I'm really disappointed in how I mixed them. — Moby

I don't think people would climb mountains or jump off bridges with parachutes or kayak Class V rapids if those things didn't offer the brief and horrible illusion of imminent death. They would just be complicated, time-consuming endeavors that we'd steer well clear of because they got in the way of real life. — Sebastian Junger

Lies were something you told other people to make things easier, somehow - hopefully, for them, but often more selfishly for yourself. — Michelle Sagara West

Earth, receive an honored guest; William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry. — W. H. Auden

He'd thought this was the start of something. But clearly she'd changed her mind, and he felt stunned by how quickly the whole thing had unraveled, the end coming before the beginning really even had a chance to begin. His poor telescope heart - that fragile, precious thing - would have probably been better left in the box. — Jennifer E. Smith

One can't help thinking, Daddy, what a colourless life a man is forced to lead, when one reflects that chiffon and Venetian point and hand embroidery and Irish crochet are to him mere empty words. Whereas a woman- whether she is interested in babies or microbes or husbands or poetry or servants or parallelograms or gardens or Plato or bridge- is fundamentally and always interested in clothes. — Jean Webster

Binge viewing has been around since DVD box sets. — Dana Brunetti

Poetry is not Irish or any other nationality; and when writers such as Messrs. Clarke, Farren and the late F. R. Higgins pursue Irishness as a poetic end, they are merely exploiting incidental local colour. — Patrick Kavanagh

I've discovered I am most comfortable outside my comfort zone. — Mark W. Boyer

If for harming himself a man forfeits his freedom, then he was never free in the first place. — Ilana Mercer

Whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower. — Barack Obama

Irish improves a poet. — Sina Queyras

My worst fears have been realized. And strangely, it's liberating. — E.L. James

I don't want to, in any way, characterize a race or a people or get accused of racial profiling, but the Irish, as lyrical and romantic as they can be in their poetry, they can be every bit as repressed in their personal relations. — Stephen Lang

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

If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door. — Paul Beatty

She took the sea with her
Not beaches but the grey
relentless Irish sea,
its rhythm and the crying gulls. — Caroline Davies

Which means, therefore, that our Bible reading is never just for seeing, never just for learning and doctrine. It is not even just for savoring, if that savoring is thought of in a private way that leaves us unchanged in our relationship with others. No. We read the Bible - we always read the Bible - for the kind of seeing and savoring Christ that transforms us into his likeness. — John Piper