Irishmen Quotes & Sayings

Do not push me," she warned in a shaky voice.

"Och, but I will." He shifted on his booted feet, pushed his hips harder against hers, until she felt a part of the wall. A part of him. "You lifted a blade to me, Katarina. I'm going to push you hard. — Kris Kennedy

For the multiculturalist, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants are prohibited, Italians and Irish get a little respect, blacks are good, native Americans are even better. The further away we go, the more they deserve respect. This is a kind of inverted, patronising respect that puts everyone at a distance. — Slavoj Zizek

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

In New Haven, Conn., when I was growing up, there were two sorts of Irish. There were the "drugstore cowboy" micks, who hung around the Elm Street poolroom over Longley's Lunch. And there were the earnest young Irishmen who fought their way up from the Grand Avenue saloonkeeper backgrounds of their fathers, went through Yale Law School, and have now found high place by the preferment of local politics or in the teaching profession. — James T. Farrell

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

Cork-born Mother Jones was renowned as a dramatic orator who relished props, curses, and all kinds of attention-getting tactics--sound at all Irish to you? She exaggerated her age, referring to strikers not too much younger than herself as "my boys" and donning frumpish costumes to emphasize her "motherly appearance. — Rashers Tierney

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

In my world, reserved Italians, heterosexual hairdressers, clouds without silver linings, ignoble savages, hard-hearted whores, advantageous ill-winds, sober Irishmen, and so on, are not permitted to exist. — Martin Amis

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

Although the Irish language is connected with the many recollections that twine around the hearts of Irishmen, yet the superior utility of the English tongue, as the medium of all modern communication, is so great that I can witness without a sigh the gradual decline of the Irish language. — Daniel O'Connell

It is a most disgraceful shame the way in which Irishmen are brought up. They are ashamed of their language, institutions, and of everything Irish. — Douglas Hyde

Nevertheless, to question authority is not, in principle, to attack it, although authority always assumes that this is the case since authority must repeatedly establish its right to rule; and if this is done by force, then it turns out that it was a tyranny all along. Good heavens, I can't believe I am preaching this to an audience of Irishmen! Just think about it: a quarter of an hour of rational thinking and an Englishman turns into an Irishman. — Terry Pratchett

We refuse to lie here in dishonor! We are not criminals, but Irishmen! This is the crime of which we stand accused. — Bobby Sands

His instructions for the flight had been unequivocal. He was to remain quiet and anonymous, avoiding unnecessary conversation and making every effort to appear as invisible as possible. He presumed this meant someone had ensured that the aisle seat would remain empty. Surely an intelligence expert of any quality - particularly a British one - would not expect an Irishman to sit next to someone for nine hours without talking. — Kathryn Guare

Now it's a war on women; tomorrow it's going to be a war on left-handed Irishmen or something like that. — Paul Ryan

A driver had been sent to meet us. He was gray-haired, short, and nimble and introduced himself. I am Patrick and so is every fourth man in Ireland, and the ones in between are named Sean or Mick or Finn, and I'll be driving you. — Sharon Creech

But it was always thus with Irishmen. Never, since the start of the world, has one of them taken a woman's sensible advice when there was foolish counsel available from his male friends. — Eddie Lenihan

In 1903, Sir James Power, Lord Mayor of Dublin, was surprised to note on a transatlantic trip that the typical Irish immigrant in America was now "not merely a hewer of wood and a drawer of water." In fact, he remarked that they are "found occupying...respectable positions in society. — Rashers Tierney

What captivity has been to the Jews, exile has been to the Irish. For us, the romance of our native land begins only after we have left home; it is really only with other people that we become Irishmen. — Peter Ackroyd

There are only three kinds of Irishmen who can't understand women. Young men, old men and men of middle age. — Elizabeth Berg

Nationalism must now be added to the refuse pile of superstitions. We are now citizens of the world, and the man who divides the race into elect Irishmen and reprobate foreign devils (especially Englishmen) had better live on the Blaskets where he can admire himself without disturbance. — George Bernard Shaw

For Irishmen, there is no football game to match rugby and if all our young men played rugby not only would we beat England and Wales but France and the whole lot of them put together. — Eamon De Valera

At this point we hated each other as much as it was possible for two Irishmen to do-and that's quite a bit. — Kevin Hearne

Before the Civil War, the Negro was certainly as efficient a workman as the raw immigrant from Ireland or Germany. But, whereas the Irishmen found economic opportunity wide and daily growing wider, the Negro found public opinion determined to 'keep him in his place.' — W.E.B. Du Bois

Because frying bacon is how we stoic Irishmen say I love you. — James Patterson

The single greatest influence in our lives was the church. The Catholic Church in the 1960s differs from what it is today, especially in the Naugatuck Valley, in those days an overwhelmingly conservative Catholic place.
I was part of what might have been the last generation of American Catholic children who completely and unquestioningly accepted the supernatural as real. Miracles happened. Virgin birth and transubstantiation made perfect sense. Mere humans did in fact, become saints. There was a Holy Ghost. Guardian angels walked beside us and our patron saints really did put in a good word for us every now and then. — John William Tuohy

He was a bloody genius with these people, slicker than any confidence artist, more popular than whisky in a room full of Irishmen. — Meredith Duran

The Irish recruits who poured into the army in 1846 were already accustomed to the realities of antebellum American nativism. The country had been rocked by anti-Catholic riots even before the famine produced new waves of Irish immigrants; in Boston, Protestant mobs had burned a convent in 1834, and Philadelphia had seen mob attacks on Irishmen ten years later. So the recent immigrants who enlisted for war with Mexico weren't surprised to encounter nativists in the army. They were very much surprised, though, by the intensity of the anti-Irish sentiment they faced from their officers - a social sentiment that was expressed through official discipline. — Chris Bray

Ireland, as distinct from her people, is nothing to me; and the man who is bubbling over with love and enthusiasm for "Ireland," and can yet pass unmoved through our streets and witness all the wrong and the suffering, shame and degradation wrought upon the people of Ireland-yea, wrought by Irishmen upon Irish men and women, without burning to end it, is, in my opinion, a fraud and a liar in his heart, no matter how he loves that combination of chemical elements he is pleased to call Ireland. — James Connolly

I'm Irish yet I don't drink as I refuse to be a stereotype and live down to the expectations of others. — Stewart Stafford

Irishmen are best at the specially hard professions - the trades of iron, the lawyer, and the soldier. — G.K. Chesterton

Verily, chemistry is not a splitting of hairs when you have got half a dozen raw Irishmen in the laboratory. — Henry David Thoreau

Now let's take up the minorities in our civilisation, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! — Ray Bradbury

In the 1870s it was estimated that a third of all the money in the Irish economy came from money sent by kindhearted Irish servant girls to their families. The Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank in New York alone would send more than $30 million to Ireland between 1850 and 1880. Many families in Ireland owed their survival to what they gratefully called the "American Letter," a lifeline that helped them cope with brutal poverty and lack of opportunity. — Rashers Tierney

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

There's a real mischievousness about Irishmen, don't you find? — Natalie Dormer

Nellie Cashman, from Midleton, County Cork, made a mint providing "bed, board, and booze" to the gold and silver miners all over the western US and Canada. She was a prodigious entrepreneur, running and owning numerous stores, restaurants, and hotels in various mining settlements. While working the bar of her hotel, canny Nellie was able to buy a number of very lucrative mines by discretely listening to the gossip of drunken prospectors. — Rashers Tierney

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

Remembering the loss of those Irishmen from all parts of the island who were sent to their deaths in the imperialist slaughter of the First World War is crucial to understanding our history. It is also important to recognise the special significance in which the Battle of the Somme and the First World War is held. — Martin McGuinness

Consider the islands bearing the names of all the saints, bristling with forts like chestnut-burs, or Echinidae, yet the police will not let a couple of Irishmen have a private sparring- match on one of them, as it is a government monopoly; all the great seaports are in a boxing attitude, and you must sail prudently between two tiers of stony knuckles before you come to feel the warmth of their breasts. — Henry David Thoreau

If there were only three Irishmen in the world you'd find two of them in a corner talking about the other. — Maria Brandan Araoz

Beyond these shores, whenever two or more Irishmen are gathered together, everything almost can be done. — Tim Egan

With our gift for language and willingness to stand up and be counted, as well as heaps of charm and charisma, we Irish have long been an integral part of American political life. — Rashers Tierney

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

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

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

I - and there are hundreds of thousands of Irishmen who felt on this subject as I do - have always liked my Celtic countrymen and disliked the English nation; it is a national trait of character, and I cannot help it. — Douglas Hyde

It's often said that "the Irish built America. The truth is, not only did they build it, they also manufactured, repaired, and cleaned it, especially in the decades before and after the potato famine. — Rashers Tierney

Killy arched an eyebrow in disbelief. Don't be thinkin' you can deceive this old man. I've been makin' a fool of myself over women since before you were born. — Pamela Clare

Scarlett O'Hara's father, Thomas, is an Irish immigrant who names his plantation Tara, after the home of the High Kings in Ireland. In an appealing nod to the "luck of the Irish," we read that Thomas O'Hara won his lands in a card game! — Rashers Tierney

Irishmen are not reserved, and the company appeared dying to be intimately acquainted. — William Hamilton Maxwell

There were two Irishmen eating sandwiches in a pub and the landlord said: "You can't eat your own food in here." So they swapped sandwiches. — Frank Carson