Irishman Quotes & Sayings

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

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

No genuine Irishman could relax in comfort and feel at home in a pub unless he was sitting in deep gloom on a hard seat with a very sad expression on his face, listening to the drone of bluebottle squadrons carrying out a raid on the yellow cheese sandwich. — Flann O'Brien

Put an Irishman on the spit and you can always get another Irishman to turn him. — George Bernard Shaw

I went to the meeting with some trepidation for, although I might have met a wizard before, I had never encountered an Irishman. — Iain Pears

Do you know that an Irishman always respond to a question with another?"
And the Irish guy replies "Who told you that? — Cathy Kelly

Once, in the South Atlantic, I saw a whaler in the process of killing a female accompanied by one of her offspring. The harpooner, a red-bearded Irishman, kept putting harpoons into the whale. The intestines were hanging out of the mangled body of the huge animal, and nevertheless it continued to swim back and forth in the water made red by its blood, trying with its shattered body to shield the little whale. Since then, and the sight of that harpooner's freckled face as he laughed derisively, and of that poor creature, faithful to the end, I have believed in the existence of Satan as I believe in the existence of God. — Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen

Educate the Russian or the American or the Englishman or the Irishman or Frenchman or any real northern European except German, and you get the Anarchist, that is to say the man who dreams of order without organisation - of something beyond organisation ... — H.G.Wells

Thomas Cromwell is now about fifty years old. He has a labourer's body, stocky, useful, running to fat. He has black hair, greying now, and because of his impermeable skin, which seems designed to resist rain as well as sun, people sneer that his father was an Irishman, though really he was a brewer and a blacksmith at Putney, a shearsman too, a man with a finger in every pie, a scrapper and a brawler, a drunk and a bully, a man often hauled before the justices for punching someone, for cheating someone. How the son of such a man has achieved his present eminence is a question all Europe asks. — Hilary Mantel

A real Irishman will give everything of himself
except that kernel of his soul which makes him a mystery to other peoples. — Jim Tully

An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman walk into a bar. The barman looks at them and says: "Is this some kind of a joke?" — Frank Carson

I'm still a proud Irishman, of course, but I've become an American citizen. I'm very, very proud of that. — Liam Neeson

I'm first and foremost an Irishman, by birth, by nature, by soul, but an American citizen through and through as well. — Pierce Brosnan

There had been a time, until 1422, when a number of both Gaelic and Anglo-Irish students attended Oxford and Cambridge in England. But fellow students had complained that Irish living together in large numbers sooner or later got noisy and violent and there was no handling them. Accordingly, the universities imposed a quota system on Irishman, and decreed that those admitted must be scattered around among non-compatriots: exclusively Irish halls of residence were banned. — Emily Hahn

In Memoriam, Louis Anglesey, Earl of Upnor, finest swordsman in England, beaten to death with a stick by an Irishman. — Neal Stephenson

When I met Jimmy Burke in 1964, he practically owned New York's Kennedy Airport. If you ask me, they named the place after the wrong Irishman. — Henry Hill

Scratch an Irishman and he'll bleed a story. — Jean Zimmerman

The Irishman sustains himself during brief periods of joy by the knowledge that tragedy is just around the corner. — W.B.Yeats

As you know, I am neither Roman Catholic, Protestant Episcopalian, nor Presbyterian, nor am I an Irishman. — John Bright

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

How white is an Irishman's ass?" Eve wondered out loud.
"You should know, darling. — J.D. Robb

An Englishmen thinks seated; a Frenchmen standing; an American pacing, an Irishman, afterwards. — Austin O'Malley

A man cannot be too careful in selecting the individual who is intrusted with his cartel. He should run over the names of his friends, and endeavour to obtain the services of a staid, cool, calculating old fellow; if possible, one who has seen some few shots exchanged: but I should advise his never choosing an Irishman on any account, as nine out of ten of those I have had the pleasure of forming an acquaintance with, both abroad and in this country, have such an innate love of fighting, they cannot bring an affair to an amicable adjustment. — A Traveller

I've had the privilege of working with Bono for the past few years in the One Campaign to fight AIDS and hunger and disease around the world. Bono is an Irishman and a great humanitarian. And I remember him telling me of his admiration for America. — Mike Huckabee

To be a young Irishman in London and go to the theater to see 'Rosemary's Baby' ... it scared the crap out of me. — Pierce Brosnan

You are a different kind of Irishman, Goll," was all she said.

"Every Irishman is a different kind of Irishman," said Goll. — Charles Brady

I am one who fights without a knack of hoping confidentlysimply a Scotch-Irishman who will not be conquered. — Woodrow Wilson

An Irishman's wife gave birth to twins. Her husband wanted to know who the other man was. — Frank Carson

It used to be the case that for an Irishman to come to the U.S. involved a perilous journey on a ship. It involved singing lots of songs before you left saying goodbye, and once you were in the U.S., it involved singing lots of songs about how you were never going to set foot in Ireland again. — Joseph O'Neill

A body can get used to anything, even to being hanged, as the Irishman said. — L.M. Montgomery

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

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

To Whom It May Concern. A racist Irishman has just made me aware that I am as bigoted as he is. Please excuse me from working with people of different skin colours until I can achieve an attitude adjustment. I do not wish to be a Nazi. — Lynn Viehl

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

There's people that when they see Samuel Hamilton the first time might get the idea he's full of bull. He don't talk like other people. He's an Irishman. And he's all full of plans - a hundred plans a day. And he's all full of hope. — John Steinbeck

Put an Englishman into the garden of Eden, and he would find fault with the whole blasted concern; put a Yankee in, and he would see where he could alter it to advantage; put an Irishman in, and he would want to boss the thing; put a Dutchman in, and he would proceed to plant it. — Josh Billings

Lost: Heartbeat. Last seen being chased away by an Irishman's shameless grin. Reward if returned. — Whitney K.E.

One of the first symptoms of time-lag is a tendency to maudlin sentimentality, like an Irishman in his cups or a Victorian poet cold-sober. — Connie Willis

The woodchopper reads the wisdom of the ages recorded on the paper that holds his dinner, then lights his pipe with it. When we ask for a scrap of paper for the most trivial use, it may have the confessions of Augustine or the sonnets of Shakespeare, and we not observe it. The student kindles his fire, the editor packs his trunk, the sportsman loads his gun, the traveler wraps his dinner, the Irishman papers his shanty, the schoolboy peppers the plastering, the belle pins up her hair, with the printed thoughts of men. — Henry David Thoreau

When we talked about "A Modest Proposal" I felt like I was running circles around everybody. I understood that shit better than the professor 'cause he was just a fan. I wasn't an Irishman, but I knew how it felt to have someone standing over you, controlling your life and wanting to call it something else. From the people at the Christian Fellowship to First Academy to my parents to Confucius to thousands of years of ass-backwards Chinese thinking, I knew how it felt. Everything my parents did to me and their parents did to them was justified under the banner of Tradition, Family, and Culture. And when it wasn't them it was someone impressing Christianity onto me and when it wasn't Christianity it was whiteness. — Eddie Huang

It is somewhat remarkable that Cornwall has produced no musical genius of any note, and yet the Cornishman is akin to the Welshman and the Irishman. — Sabine Baring-Gould

Keep dreaming, Irish," she said dryly, though her breath was ragged.
"I will, but it remains to be seen whether they'll come true." The man was all confidence and skilled seduction.
Kate smirked. "Only an Irishman would say that."
"Only a beautiful, stubborn lass would ignore the truth. — Whitney K.E.

This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath. It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work. I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they are commonly ruled for dollars and cents. An Irishman, seeing me making a minute in the fields, took it for granted that I was calculating my wages. If a man was tossed out of a window when an infant, and so made a cripple for life, or scared out of his wits by the Indians, it is regretted chiefly because he was thus incapacitated for - business! I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business. — Henry David Thoreau

After high school, I went to Stanford University and majored in English. Of course, that gave me a chance to do lots more reading and writing. I also received degrees in London and Dublin - where I moved to be near a charming Irishman who became my husband! — Linda Sue Park

I turned on the water then returned to the door jamb. "That's not fair, you're nice and clean."
"I am?" He took a few steps toward me.
"Aren't you?"
"No," he scowled and shook his head. "I'm dirty. But you knew that."
Now, if you haven't heard an Irishman say the word "dirty" before, I will compare it with dynamite in your ovaries. They say it with like, seven Rs. — Nicole Castro

An Irishman can be worried by the consciousness that there is nothing to worry about. — Austin O'Malley

disgraceful, indelible blot on the conscience of England and it would remain there forever. No true Irishman would ever forgive them for that, but the Titanic story — Michael Grant

Every St. Patrick's Day every Irishman goes out to find another Irishman to make a speech to. — Shane Leslie

The doctors are all agreed that I am suffering from want of society. Was never a case like it. First, I did not know that I was suffering at all. Secondly, as an Irishman might say, I had thought it was indigestion of the society I got. — Henry David Thoreau

For when Philippe, with his snapping eyes and his wild ways, left Savannah forever, he took with him the glow that was in Ellen's heart and left for the bandy-legged little Irishman who married her only a gentle shell. — Margaret Mitchell

Killenkusi was a Machi59 priestess. Her daughter Kinturay had to choose between succeeding her or becoming a spy; she chose the latter and her love for the Irishman; this opportunity afforded her the hope of having a child who, like Lautaro and mixed-race Alejo, would be raised among the Spaniards, and like them might one day lead the hosts of those who wished to push the conquistadors back beyond the Maule River, because Admapu law prohibited the Araucanians from fighting outside of Yekmonchi. Her hope was realized and in the spring60 of the year 1777, in the place called Palpal, an Araucanian woman endured the pain of childbirth in a standing position because tradition decreed that a strong child could not be born of a weak mother. The son arrived and became the Liberator of Chile. — Roberto Bolano

I was born in 1951 in Kalgoorlie, a prosperous mining town 370 miles east of Perth, Western Australia. Kalgoorlie was a gold rush town which sprang up in the desert after the Irishman Paddy Hannan struck gold there in 1892. — Barry Marshall

Every Irishman, the saying goes, has a potato in his head. — Augustus Hare

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

Now here I am playing a passionate young Irishman who would die for what he believes in. — James D'arcy

An Irishman talks best when there is competition. — Mary Doyle Curran

A transplanted Irishman, German, Englishman is an American in one generation. A transplanted African is not one in five! — Barbara Chase-Riboud

An Irishman's heart is nothing but his imagination. — George Bernard Shaw

To subvert the tyranny of our execrable government, to break the connection with England, the never-failing source of all our political evils and to assert the independence of my country- these were my objectives. To unite the whole people of Ireland, to abolish the memory of all past dissensions, and to substitute the common name of Irishman in place of the denominations of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter - these were my means. — Wolfe Tone

I am an unusual Irishman. I'm probably Ireland's third most famous Jewish son. — Lenny Abrahamson

I am an Irishman, sir." "Irish Irish?" "Yes, sir. — Arthur Conan Doyle

The poor silly-clever Irishman takes off his hat to God's Englishman. — George Bernard Shaw

The heart of an Irishman is nothing but his imagination — George Bernard Shaw

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

He knew the world and its absurdities as only an intelligent Irishman can; which is to say that where his knowledge or memory failed him, his imagination was always ready to fill the gap. — John Fowles

As a member of the Protestant British squirearchy ruling Ireland, he was touchy about his Irish origins. When in later life an enthusiastic Gael commended him as a famous Irishman, he replied A man can be born in a stable, and yet not be an animal. — Duke Of Wellington

They have nothing in their whole imperial arsenal that can break the spirit of one Irishman who doesn't want to be broken. — Bobby Sands

If you ask an Irishman for directions, he might be quick to answer, Well if I were going there, I would not start here. — Steve Stockman

OUCH

"The arrabal (a term used for poor neighbourhoods in Argentina and Uruguay) and carpa (informal mobile theatre set up inside tents, once common in Latin America), with their caliente (hot) rhythms such as the rumba or the cha-cha-cha, were conquering audiences all over the world, a trend allegorised in song lyrics about their popularity among the French and other non-Latin Americans - "The Frenchman has fun like this/as does the German/and the Irishman has a ball/as does even the Muslim" ("Cachita") - even as they filtered in the presence of a blackness - "and if you want to dance/look for your Cachita/and tell her "Come on negrita"/let's dance" - denied in the official discourse of those Spanish=speaking countries wielding the greatest economic power in the region: namely, Argentina and Mexico, the latter of which would eventually incorporate Afro-Latin American culture into its cinema - although being careful to mark it as Cuban and not Mexican. — Robert McKee Irwin

You ran away from an adorable Irishman who wanted to se you naked? — Christine Warren

A proper Irishman always does what a lady asks him. Sure an' it's been the ruin av us. We're at the mercy av the petticoats. — L.M. Montgomery

As a consequence [of a closed economic circle], in 1912 there was not a single Irishman who sat on a single board of a major Boston bank. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

I thought I was God's gift to mankind and the greatest Irishman since George Best. — James Nesbitt

Have you heard about the Irishman who reversed into a car boot sale and sold the engine? — Frank Carson

An Irishman's imagination never lets him alone, never convinces him, never satisfies him; but it makes him that he can't face reality nor deal with it nor handle it nor conquer it: he can only sneer at them that do, and be 'agreeable to strangers', like a good-for-nothing woman on the streets. — George Bernard Shaw

I agree with the realistic Irishman who said he preferred to prophesy after the event. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

You're a good Irishman, right?" When Butch nodded, V said, "Irish, Irish ... let me think. Yeah ... " Vishous's eyes sobered, and in a voice that cracked, he said, "May the road rise to meet you. May the wind always be at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face and the rains fall soft upon your fields. And ... my dearest friend ... until we meet again may the Lord hold you in the palm of His hand. — J.R. Ward

This would be a grand land if only every Irishman would kill a negro, and be hanged for it. — Edward Augustus Freeman

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

An Irishman I am, begora! With a heart and a spirit on
me not crushed be a hundred years of oppression. I'll be getting me
shillelagh out next, wait'll you see. — Martin McDonagh

Alas! the culture of an Irishman is an enterprise to be undertaken with a sort of moral bog hoe. — Henry David Thoreau

Give an Irishman lager for a month and he's a dead man. An Irishman's stomach is lined with copper, and the beer corrodes it. But whiskey polishes the copper and is the saving of him. — Mark Twain

I was walking across King's Cross station when a drunken Irishman came stumbling up and flung his arms around me. He wanted to thank me for the peace process in Northern Ireland. — Ann Widdecombe

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

I'm still a scarred and surly Irishman. — Kresley Cole

I would never repudiate the fact that I am an Irishman — Ian Paisley

An Irishman needs three things : silence, cunnning, and exile. — James Joyce

It is rare that we use our thinking faculty as resolutely as an irishman his spade. To please our friends and relatives we turn out our silver ore in cartloads, while we neglect to workour mines of gold known only to ourselves far up in the Sierras, where we pulled up a bush in our mountain walk, and saw the glittering treasure. Let us return thither. Let it be the price of our freedom to make that known. — Henry David Thoreau

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

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

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

If they were going to be like that, then I just wished they hadn't actually been German. It was too easy. Too obvious. It was like coming across an Irishman who actually was stupid, a mother-in-law who actually was fat, or an American businessman who actually did have a middle initial and smoked a cigar. You feel as if you are unwillingly performing in a music-hall sketch and wishing you could rewrite the script. If Helmut and Kurt had been Brazilian or Chinese or Latvian or anything else at all, they could then have behaved in exactly the same way and it would have been surprising and intriguing and, more to the point from my perspective, much easier to write about. Writers should not be in the business of propping up stereotypes. I wondered what to do about it, decided that they could simply be Latvians if I wanted, and then at last drifted off peacefully to worrying about my boots. — Douglas Adams

Show me an Irishman who can't tell a story - I don't think they exist. — Patricia Polacco

It's a sailors' tradition, miss." O'Shea approached, his thick brogue cutting through Sophia's confusion. "The Sea King himself comes aboard to have a bit of sport with those crossing the Tropic for the first time, like the new boy there." He nodded toward Davy, who stood to the side, looking every bit as confused as Sophia but unwilling to own to it.
Quinn crossed his massive forearms over his chest, stacking them like logs. "And Triton always collects his tax, of course."
"His tax?" Sophia asked.
O'Shea gave her a sly look. "Best be ready with a coin or two, Miss Turner. If you can't pay his tax, old Triton just might sweep ye down to the depths with him and keep ye there forever."
Quinn chuckled, shooting the Irishman a knowing look. "Knowing old Triton, it wouldn't be surprising if he did just that."
O'Shea winked at the crewman. "Could hardly blame him. — Tessa Dare

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

T. S. Eliot and Jean-Paul Sartre, dissimilar enough as thinkers, both tend to undervalue prose and to deny it any imaginative function. Poetry is the creation of linguistic quasi-things; prose is for explanation and exposition, it is essentially didactic, documentary, informative. Prose is ideally transparent; it is only faute de mieux written in words. The influential modern stylist is Hemingway. It would be almost inconceivable now to write like Landor. Most modern English novels indeed are not written. One feels they could slip into some other medium without much loss. It takes a foreigner like Nabokov or an Irishman like Beckett to animate prose language into an imaginative stuff in its own right. — Iris Murdoch

Ideally, we'd want an Irishman coming in for the job, but, ideally it doesn't really matter. — Clinton Morrison

Mulligan: invented by an Irishman who wanted to hit one more twenty yard grounder. — Jim Bishop

I swim in a pool of my own neurosis. I carry love, grief deeply, like an Irishman. — Richard Harris