Old Ireland Quotes & Sayings

Every publisher or agent I've ever met told me the same thing - that Irish readers don't want to read about the bad old days of the Troubles; neither do the English and Americans - they only want to read about the Ireland of The Quiet Man, when red-haired widows are riding bicycles and everyone else is on a horse. — Adrian McKinty

Ireland is a series of stories that have been told to us, starting with the Irish Celtic national revival. I never believed in 'Old Ireland.' It has been made all of kitsch by the diaspora, looking back and deciding what Ireland is. Yes, it is green. Yes, it is friendly. I can't think of anything else for definite. — Anne Enright

And you, Tacitus,
observe how I make my grove
on an old crannog
piled by the fearful dead:

a desolate peace.
Our mother ground
in sour with the blood
of her faithful,

they lie gargling
in her sacred heart
as the legions stare
from the ramparts.

Come back to this
'island of the ocean'
where nothing will suffice.
Read the inhumed faces

of casualty and victim;
report us fairly,
how we slaughter
for the common good

and shave the heads
of the notorious,
how the goddess swallows
our love and terror.
- Kinship — Seamus Heaney

Don't become a grumpy old dater! Life ids for living, laughing and loving!Stop searching, start finding! — Siggy Buckley

The poor old Duke [of Wellington]! What shall I say of him? To be sure he was born in Ireland, but being born in a stable does not make a man a horse. — Daniel O'Connell

How can I intimidate Tiger Woods? I mean, the guy's got 75 or whatever PGA Tour wins, 14 majors. He's been the biggest thing ever in our sport. How could some little 23-year-old from Northern Ireland with a few wins come up and intimidate him. — Rory McIlroy

Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow because most full of love. — Walt Whitman

There were six men in Birmingham
In Guildford there's four
That were picked up and tortured
And framed by the law
And the filth got promotion
But they're still doing time
For being Irish in the wrong place
And at the wrong time

In Ireland they'll put you away in the Maze
In England they'll keep you for seven long days
God help you if ever you're caught on these shores
The coppers need someone
When they walk through that door

You'll be counting years
First five, then ten
Growing old in a lonely hell
Round the yard and a stinking cell
From wall to wall, and back again

A curse on the judges, the coppers and screws
Who tortured the innocent, wrongly accused
For the price of promotion
And justice to sell
May the judged be their judges when they rot down in hell — Shane MacGowan

There were very few real folk singers you know, though I liked Dominic Behan a bit and there was some good stuff to be heard in Liverpool. Just occasionally you hear very old records on the radio or TV of real workers in Ireland or somewhere singing these songs and the power of them is fantastic. — John Lennon

I am, of course, directly descended from Brian Boru, the last king of Ireland, a fact certified by my mother and therefore beyond dispute. But as everybody else with a drop of Irish blood in his carcass is also a guaranteed descendant of the old billy goat, I am not overly arrogant because of this royal strain. — Preston Sturges

Then the woman in the bed sat up and looked about her with wild eyes; and the oldest of the old men said: 'Lady, we have come to write down the names of the immortals,' and at his words a look of great joy came into her face. Presently she, began to speak slowly, and yet eagerly, as though she knew she had but a little while to live, and, in English, with the accent of their own country; and she told them the secret names of the immortals of many lands, and of the colours, and odours, and weapons, and instruments of music and instruments of handicraft they held dearest; but most about the immortals of Ireland and of their love for the cauldron, and the whetstone, and the sword, and the spear, and the hills of the Shee, and the horns of the moon, and the Grey Wind, and the Yellow Wind, and the Black Wind, and the Red Wind. ("The Adoration of the Magi") — W.B.Yeats

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

Perhaps we should explore some other options before swanning off to Ireland," Dad said, pushing his glasses up. "After all, Sophie, you've been through quite the ordeal."
"I'll nap on the plane. Look, we are dealing with the possibility of an army of demons. I don't know about you guys, but those words are right up there with 'root canal' and 'school on Saturdays' in terms of things that terrify me. Were already three weeks behind. We don't have time to just sit here and explore options or read more books or listen to more half-assed prophecies from this jerk," I said, pointing to Torin. He made a gesture that I think was the old-timey version of flipping me off.
"So, yeah," I continued. "Maybe this is a totally stupid idea. But if there's even a chance one of us can get into the underworld, then we have to take it."
"Okay, I do like you," Finley said, flashing me a grin. — Rachel Hawkins

My grandfather is from Ireland. His name is Florence McCarthy. He moved to New York in 1920. They used to beat him up because his name was Florence. He had to switch his name to Frank. And then this Christmas, he made an announcement - he goes, 'I'm switching me name back to Florence.' And we beat him up, 'cause it's a dumb name and he's old and weak and it was easy. — Greg Fitzsimmons

When I finally went to Ireland, I had to go. It was 1993. My father was finally too old to travel alone, and he asked me to take him home. When an old man asks you to take him home, you have to do it. — John Patrick Shanley

Did you ever hear tell,'
said Jimmy Farrell,
'of the skulls they have
in the city of Dublin?
White skulls and black skulls
and yellow skulls, and some
with full teeth, and some
haven't only but one,'
and compounded history
in the pan of 'an old Dane,
maybe, was drowned
in the Flood.'
My words lick around
cobbled quays, go hunting
lightly as pampooties
over the skull-capped ground.
-Viking Dublin: Trial Pieces — Seamus Heaney

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

How am I going to tell the kids? How do I tell the man that I love, the man that I swore I'd grow old with that we won't have that happy ending that he and I have worked so hard for? How do I say goodbye to all of you? How do I let go? — Nicole Ireland

And so I have brought this pint for him - a proper Irish pint, from Ireland. This pint - brought through the sky, and over the sea. I am finally buying my old man a good pint of Guinness. As I walk through the door, holding the glass - kids throwing themselves at me, one already crying - I hold it out to Dadda, and tell him to sip it. He tears the cling film off - looking at me, confused - and then takes a sip. "Christ. That's flat," he says. — Caitlin Moran

I absolutely love Ireland. It's one of the most beautiful places on Earth, and I have strong ties here. Both my grandmothers are from Ireland, and I have spent every summer in Bantry since my father, who is an artist, had the romantic idea 20 years ago to buy an old farmhouse on the west coast and renovate it. — Emily Ratajkowski

Ireland was, of old, called the Isle of Saints because of the great number of holy ones of both sexes who flourished there in former ages or who, coming thence, propagated the faith amongst other nations. — Sabine Baring-Gould

Too late for that now," the Eldest Leprechaun said. "The damage is done. Give the thing a name, and it takes shape. They gave a name and a shape to the force that's always hated us. It's everything we're not. It's New Ireland, it's money for money's sake, brown paper envelopes stuffed full of bribes - the turn of mind that says that the old's only good for theme parks, and the new is all there needs to be. It's been getting stronger and stronger all this while.And now that it's more important to the people living in the city than we are, it's become physically real. — Andrew M. Greeley

Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow. — James Joyce

The house in the story is based on my friend Tori's house in Kinsale, Ireland, which is obviously not actually haunted, and the sound of people upstairs moving wardrobes around when you are downstairs there and alone is probably just something that old houses do when they think they are unobserved. — Neil Gaiman

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

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

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

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 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

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

My job now, as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, is to take this process forward, and that I'm determined to do, whatever old clippings you dig out and whatever old quotes you put before me. — Peter Hain

My father gave me an old Olympia portable when I was in fourth grade. Our ancestors came from Ireland. Our family stories of immigration helped me understand more about my characters in 'The Lemon Orchard.' — Luanne Rice

These people in the North-east of Ireland, from old prejudices perhaps more from anything else, from the whole of their past history, would prefer, I believe, to accept the government of a foreign country rather than submit to be governed by honourable gentlemen below the gangway [i.e. the Irish Nationalist Party]. — Bonar Law

At three o'clock this afternoon Evelyn Wastneys died. I am Evelyn Wastneys, and I died, standing at the door of an old country home in Ireland... — Mrs. George De Horne Vaizey

So you would kill Old Ireland?" Anna Livia said. "You would kill yourself, for without Old Ireland, you wouldn't be. — Andrew M. Greeley

Although there was no reliable way of dating periods, there was no shortage of people willing to try. The most well known early attempt30 was made in 1650, when Archbishop James Ussher of the Church of Ireland made a careful study of the Bible and other historical sources and concluded, in a hefty tome called Annals of the Old Testament, that the Earth had been created at midday on 23 October 4004 BC, an assertion that has amused historians and textbook writers ever since. — Bill Bryson

What happened was that everyone in Ireland had the idea that somewhere in Ireland there was a little wise old man who was in charge of the money, and this was the first time they'd ever seen this little man," says McCarthy. "And then they saw him and said, Who the fuck was that??? Is that the fucking guy who is in charge of the money??? That's when everyone panicked. — Michael Lewis

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

The Christian saints did not merely resemble the old polytheistic gods. Often they were these very same gods in disguise. For example, the chief goddess of Celtic Ireland prior to the coming of Christianity was Brigid. When Ireland was Christianised, Brigid too was baptised. She became St Brigit, who to this day is the most revered saint in Catholic Ireland. The — Yuval Noah Harari

I was raised in a very old fashioned Ireland where women were reared to be lovely. — Anne Enright

Fortunately, at that time, Ireland wasn't in the world. So we weren't in the World War. Old Roundrims came up with that. Brilliant, really. World War II was toirmiscthe, he said, which people had to look up but basically turned out to be verboten in Irish. Twitter went crazy, saying it was shameful and backward, but back then twitter was only spoken by birds. — Niall Williams

Maybe she'd ended up going to Ireland because whilst visiting her father she'd bumped into an old love from her youth, perhaps even her ex? Such spontaneous acts really only worked with men left over from earlier in your life. — Eva Heller

Northern Ireland still suffers from its past, and it will take generations to escape sectarianism and for violence to end totally. Nonetheless, it is in a different place now than during the Troubles, and it will not go back to the old days. — Jonathan Powell

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

When I sang the line, 'Songs about Old Ireland.Songs about being young again.I wish I was young again,' twice people cried. I saw them. — Aoife O'Donovan

Christina Baker Kline writes exquisitely about two unlikely friends - one, a 91-year-old survivor of the grinding poverty of rural Ireland, immigrant New York and the hardscrabble Midwest; and the other, a casualty of a string of foster homes - each struggling to transcend a past of isolation and hardship. Orphan Train will hold you in its grip as their fascinating tales unfold. — Cathy Marie Buchanan

Archbishop James Ussher of the Church of Ireland made a careful study of the Bible and other historical sources and concluded, in a hefty tome called Annals of the Old Testament, that the Earth had been created at midday on 23 October 4004 BC, an assertion — Bill Bryson

As to the old history of Ireland, the first man ever died in Ireland was Partholan, and he is buried, and his greyhound along with him, at some place in Kerry. — Lady Gregory