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Irish Quips and Quotes

Every few days, we post a quote, saying, proverb or delightful bit of Irish wit. Enjoy!

We have recently reorganized our Quotes. We realized that there were just too many of them on one page (we can be a bit slow at times). So,we have divided them up into four categories.
This one - Quotes - is the serious page; uplifting, thought-provoking and insightful.

Click for the others:
Anecdotes
Wit & Humor
Proverbs & Sayings


Note: We often have difficulty validating a quote source. If you catch an error or you have a source for the, all too common, anonymous, let us know. Please, though, give us an authoritative source or, at least, corroboration. Otherwise, we just have dozens of contradictory opinions.
Click to send us an E-mail.


When Erin first rose from the dark-swelling flood,
God bless'd the green island, He saw it was good.
The Emerald of Europe, it sparkled, it shone,
In the ring of this world the most precious stone!
From the poem "Erin" by Dr. William Brennan, who is credited with being the first to refer to Ireland in print as "the Emerald Isle." To read the poem in its entirety, please click:
Erin.
Photo Credit: European Space Agency






I would like the angels of Heaven to be among us.
I would like an abundance of peace.
I would like full vessels of charity.
I would like rich treasures of mercy.
I would like cheerfulness to preside over all.
I would like Jesus to be present.
I would like the three Marys of illustrious renown to be with us.
I would like the friends of Heaven to be gathered around us from all parts. I would like myself to be a rent payer to the Lord; that I should suffer
distress, that he would bestow a good blessing upon me.
I would like a great lake of beer for the King of Kings. I would like to be watching Heaven's family drinking it through all eternity.
St. Brigid of Ireland
Image Credit: St. Bridgid's Church, Drum, Co. Roscommon


It is Ireland's sacred duty to send over, every few years, a playwright to save the English theatre from inarticulate glumness.
Kenneth Tynan, Observer, 27 May 1956
Photo Credit: Guardian UK/Jane Brown




"Give an Irishman lager for a month, and he's a dead man. An Irishman is lined with copper, and the beer corrodes it. But whiskey polishes the copper and is the saving of him."
Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
Photo Credit: Irish Whiskey Trail



I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality.
James Joyce on Ulysses
Photo Credit: University of Buffalo






Wedding Toast
May you be poor in misfortune, rich in blessings, slow to make enemies and quick to make friends. And may you know nothing but happiness from this day forward.
Photo Credit: Wedding Rehearsal & Dinner Speeches








"You must not grieve for all this. We have preserved Ireland’s honour and our own. Our deeds of last week are the most splendid in Ireland’s history. People will say hard things of us now, but we shall be remembered by posterity and blessed by unborn generations. You too will be blessed because you were my mother."
Patrick Pearse - from a letter to his mother following his surrender and imprisonment after the Easter Rising, 1916.
Photo Credit: Indy Media



..."the drink and I have been friends for so long, it would be a pity for me to leave without one last kiss."
The last words of harpist, singer and compose Turlough O'Carolan who died on March 25 1738.











I love every thing that is old; old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines.
From She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith. The play was performed for the first time at Covent Garden Theatre, London on March 15th, 1733
Photo Credit: Book Rags


"Ireland, thou friend of my country in my country's most friendless days, much injured, much enduring land, accept this poor tribute from one who esteems thy worth, and mourns thy desolation."
- George Washington, speaking of Ireland's support for America during the revolution.
Image Credit: Success Creeations


"When I die Dublin will be written in my heart.”
James Joyce
Born February 2, 1882, Died January 13, 1941
Photo Credit: Schoolhouse Language Specialists


Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.
Oscar Wilde



Who cares? When autumn birds in flocks
Fly southward, back we turn the clocks,
And so regain a lovely thing
That missing hour we lost in spring.
Phyllis McGinley
Photo Credit: Migrating Birds from ABC Science





"He was a bold man that first ate an oyster"
Jonathan Swift
Photo Credit: Ireland Logue





“Gypsy gold does not chink and glitter. It gleams in the sun and neighs in the dark.” Saying of the Claddagh Gypsies of Galway
Photo Credit: Blueprints Express.


"I have never seen a West Cork farmer with an umbrella, except at a funeral. His father or grandfather, who went to the creamery with an ass and cart, insulated himself against the vagaries of the heavens with a thick woolen overcoat and slightly greasy flat cap. Little rain permeated the oxter or the headgear. Beneath the outer layer, which could weigh a hundredweight when well soaked, the man remained dry and warm."
- Damien Engright, "A Place Near Heaven - A Year in West Cork"
Photo Credit: Flicker


Then here’s to the land that is green and grey
The land of all lands the best!
For the South is bright, and the East is gay,
But the sun shines last in the West,
 The West!
The sun shines last in the West!
In Spain: Drinking Song by Emily Lawless
Irish poet born June 17, 1845 in Co. Kildare
Photo Credit: John Smythe



Irish poets, learn your trade,
sing whatever is well made,
scorn the sort now growing up
all out of shape from toe to top.
W.B. Yeats
Photo Credit: Nobel Library








WONDERFUL MOTHER
God made a wonderful mother,
A mother who never grows old;
He made her smile of the sunshine,
And He moulded her heart of pure gold;
In her eyes He placed bright shining stars,
In her cheeks the fair roses you see;
God made a wonderful mother,
And He gave that dear mother to me.
Pat O'Reilly
Photo Credit: Irish Corner





I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.
Seamus Heaney



That God once loved a garden we learn in Holy writ.
And seeing gardens in the Spring I well can credit it.
Winifred Mary Letts
Photo Credit: Spring flowers in Phoenix Park, Dublin by Annie Mills


When law can stop the blades of grass
from growin' as they grow,
An' when the leaves in summer time
their color dare not show,
Then I will change the color, too,
I wear in my caubeen;
But till that day, plaise God,
I'll stick to the Wearin' o' the Green.
~Author Unknown






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.
G. B. Shaw



A Mother's Love Is A Blessing
An Irish boy was leaving
Leaving his native home
Crossing the broad Atlantic
Once more he wished to roam
And as he was leaving his mother
Who was standing on the quay
She threw her arms around his waist
And this to him did say

A mother's love's a blessing
No matter where you roam
Keep her while she's living
You'll miss her when she's gone
Love her as in childhood
Though feeble, old and grey
For you'll never miss a mother's love
Till she's buried beneath the clay.
From the song of the same name by Thomas P Keenan
Photo Credit: Irish Emigrants Leaving for a New Life in America
Framed Art Print from All Posters


Any Kerryman will tell you that there are only two Kingdoms: the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Kerry - "One is not of this world and the other is out of this world"
Photo Credit: My Guide - Ireland/Ring of Kerry






Oh, call it by some better name,
For Friendship sounds too cold,
While love is now a worldly flame,
Whose shrine must be of gold;
And Passion like, the sun at noon,
That burns o’er all he sees
Awhile as warm, will set as soon -
Then, call it none of these.
Imagine something purer far,
More free from stain of clay
Than Friendship, Love or Passion are,
Yet human still as they;
And if thy lip, for love like this
No mortal word can frame,
Go, ask of angels what it is,
And call it by that name.
Thomas Moore
Photo credit: Whispering Angels/All Posters

He had lov'd for his love, for his country he died, 
They were all that to life had entwin'd him,
Nor soon shall the tears of his country be dried, 
Nor long will his love stay behind him. 
From She is Far From the Land by Thomas Moore. It is said that it was written for Sarah Curran who was the fiance of patriot Robert Emmet. To read the poem and hear the tune, please click Contemplator.
Photo Credit: Wallace Travel Group

Now it's St Brigid's Day and the first snowdrop
In County Wicklow, and this a Brigid's Girdle
I'm plaiting for you, an airy fairy hoop
(Like one of those old crinolines they'd trindle),
Twisted straw that's lifted in a circle
To handsel and to heal, a rite of spring
As strange and lightsome and traditional
As the motions you go through going through the thing.
From A Brigid’s Girdle for Adele by Seamus Heaney
Photo Credit: Cards Unlimited






the red rose shineth rare,
And the lily saintly fair;
But my shamrock, one in three,
Takes the inmost heart of me!
From Shamrock Song by Katharine Tynan
Photo Credit: The Garden Helper



New Year's resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other.
Anonymous

Christmas townlands wait,
Carrig, Lenamore,
Road and field, they undulate
To every open door;
Village, byre and frosty ways,
Show farmer, townie, whining crone
Grow generous with praise.
From the Wren Boy by Brendan Kennelly
Photo Credit: National Folklore Collection





It might be easy to run away to a monastery, away from the commercialization, the hectic hustle, the demanding family responsibilities of Christmas-time. Then we would have a holy Christmas. But we would forget the lesson of the Incarnation, of the enfleshing of God—the lesson that we who are followers of Jesus do not run from the secular; rather we try to transform it. It is our mission to make holy the secular aspects of Christmas just as the early Christians baptized the Christmas tree. And we do this by being holy people—kind, patient, generous, loving, laughing people—no matter how maddening is the Christmas rush...
Fr. Andrew Greeley

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful:
The Lord God made them all.
From Hymns for Little Children by Cecil F. Alexander who was born in Co. Wicklow and is thought to have written the words at Markree Castle, Collooney, Co. Sligo. To hear the melody and read all of the lyrics, please click Cyber Hymnal.
Photo Credit: Irish Animals

A weary soldier fighting against Napoleon at Waterloo wrote in his diary: "When I [could] take some nourishment, I felt the most extraordinary desire for a glass of Guinness." Doctors wrote in to say that they found Guinness good for everything from "insomnia, neurasthenia, debility and constipation" to an "effective aid for nursing mothers."
Guinness tried to get stout admitted into the U.S. during Prohibition as a medicine, but the Treasury Department coldly said no.

No man is so old as to believe he cannot live one more year.
Sean O’Casey Irish playwright born on March 30, 1880 and died on September 18, 1964.
Photo credit: Britannica Student Encyclopedia



On September 10, 2001, less than 24 hours before he died, Fr. Mychal Judge re-dedicated Chief Von Essen's old firehouse in the Bronx.
"Good days, bad days, but never a boring day on this job. You do what God has called you to do. You show up, you put one foot in front of the other, and you do your job, which is a mystery and a surprise. You have no idea, when you get in that rig, what God is calling you to. But he needs you; so keep going. Keep supporting each other. Be kind to each other. Love each other. Work together. You love the job. We all do. What a blessing that is.”



With his friendly patter between songs, Makem could make every one of his listeners feel part Irish and proud of it...Makem has his audience ready to go out and die for Ireland.
The New York Times; Oct. 12, 1999








“Life has moved on but in ways which would not have been possible without the sacrifice, courage and devotion of those whose lives were taken. Let us remember with quiet pride and quiet admiration those who gave so much.”
Attributed to the former Archbishop of the Church of Ireland, Lord Eames, in reference to the end of Operation Banner - the British Army’s 38-year occupation of Northern Ireland.
Photo Credit: BBC





I'm an atheist and I thank God for it.
George Bernard Shaw

Don’t be surprised
If I demur, for, be advised
My passport’s green.
No glass of ours was ever raised
To toast The Queen.
Seamus Heaney in an open letter from a Field Day Pamphlet rebuking the editors of the Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry for including him among its authors.


Ireland is not just the country of a thousand welcomes but a country of equal opportunity. Ireland has changed and will never be the same again but I say this is a good thing.”
Rotimi Adebari, Ireland’s first black mayor who was elected to the office in Portlaois, Co. Laois






After 10 years and more of the peace process, this generation has built a solid foundation. Now it's time to build a better future for the generations to come.
An Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern

I'd like the memory of me to be a happy one, I'd like to leave an afterglow of smiles when life is done. I'd like to leave an echo whispering softly down the ways, of happy times and laughing times and bright and sunny days. I'd like the tears of those who grieve, to dry before the sun, of happy memories that I leave when life is done.
From the Dermot O’Brien page on the net, please click Dermot O'Brien.

"Today I can say to this Parliament at Westminster as John Kennedy said in Dublin, 'Ireland's hour has come'. It came, not as victory or defeat, but as a shared future for all. Solidarity has made us stronger. Reconciliation has brought us closer. Ireland's hour has come: a time of peace, of prosperity, of old values and new beginnings.
This is the great lesson and the great gift of Irish history. This is what Ireland can give to the world."
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in a speach to the British Joint Houses of Parliament.

"From the depths of my heart I believe Northern Ireland has come to a time of peace, a time when hate will no longer rule."
Quoted by Dr. Ian Paisley following his historic swearing in as First Minister of the new power-sharing government along side Martin McGuiness who was sworn in as Deputy First Minister.



We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.
Oscar Wilde
Photo Credit: Pip Wilson’s Almanac


I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.
Seamus Heaney

Hope, like the gleaming taper's light,
Adorns and cheers our way;
And still, as darker grows the night
Emits a brighter ray.
From The Captivity (act II, sc. 1) by Oliver Goldsmith
Image Credit: David Williamson


When people are divided, the only solution is agreement.
John Hume Irish politician from Northern Ireland, and co-recipient of the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize with David Trimble.
Photo Credit: Academy of Achievement


Can it be out of the kindness of my heart that I carry out such a labor of mercy on a people who once captured me when they wrecked my father's house and carried off his servants? For by descent I was a freeman, born of a decurion father; yet I have sold this nobility of mine, I am not ashamed, nor do I regret that it might have meant some advantage to others. In short, I am a slave in Christ to this faraway people for the indescribable glory of "everlasting life which is in Jesus Christ our Lord."
From a Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus translated from the Latin by John Skinner in The Confession of St. Patrick

St. Patrick's Day is an enchanted time - a day to begin transforming winter's dreams into summer's magic.
Adrienne Cook
Photo Credit: Lissadellhouse


I have rarely been prouder or more conscious of my country and my nationality..
Former GAA president Sean Kelly speaking to the Irish Post in reference to the historic Ireland vs. England rugby match at croke Park.







After 800 years, it's now time for peace with the 'Saxon foe'
GAA commentator Micheal O Muircheartaigh in advance of the historic Six Nations Ireland vs England match at Croke Park and in reference to the playing of God Save the Queen.

Marriage: When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
George Bernard Shaw
Photo Credit: Anne Lanier Weddings






The red rose whispers of passion,
And the white rose breathes of love;
O, the red rose is a falcon,
And the white rose is a dove.
But I send you a cream-white- rosebud
With a flush on its petal tips;
For the love that is purest and sweetest
Has a kiss of desire on the lips.
John Boyle O'Reilly


“The Gaelic League is founded not upon hatred of England, but upon love of Ireland. Hatred is a negative passion; it is powerful - a very powerful destroyer; but it is useless for building up. Love, on the other hand, is like faith; it can move mountains, and faith, we have mountains to move.”
Douglas Hyde, born on January 17th, 1860.
He was Ireland's first president, a promoter and enthusiast of the Gaelic language, and a writer of such works as Beside the Fire (1890), Love Songs of Connacht (1894) and A Literary History of Ireland (1899).
Photo Credit: Roscommon County Library


People with a culture of poverty suffer much less from repression than we of the middle class suffer and indeed, if I may make the suggestion with due qualification, they often have a hell of a lot more fun than we have.
Brien Friel.



Our Irish blunders are never blunders of the heart.
Maria Edeworth. She was born on January 1, 1767 and is one of the few women literary figures of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Photo Credit: On-Line Literature







Christmas weather forecast
According to the old folklore, if Christmas falls on Sunday,
it means a warm winter and a hot dry summer.
On Monday: a foggy winter and a windy summer.
On Tuesday: a snowy winter and a wet summer.
On Wednesday: a hard winter and a very good summer.
On Thursday: a soft winter and a very good summer.
On Friday: a moderate winter and a moderate Autumn.
And on Saturday: a windy snowy winter and a good summer.
Source: Mamó’s House


A double helping of quotes for Thanksgiving

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
There is no sincerer love than the love of food.
George Bernard Shaw





The rick is thatched
The fields are bare,
Long nights are here again.
The year was fine
But now 'tis time
To hear the ballad-men.
Boul in, boul in and take a chair
Admission here is free,
You're welcome to the Rambling House
To meet the Seanachi.
Eamon Kelly’s prologue to his storytelling programme on Radio Eireann. To read our article, please click In My Father’s Time.
Photo credit: Smarter Travel.

"Midnight has come and the great Christ Church bell
And many a lesser bell sound through the room;
And it is All Souls’ Night.
And two long glasses brimmed with muscatel
Bubble upon the table. A ghost may come;
For it is a ghost’s right..."
William Butler Yeats, in All Souls' Night
Photo Credit: Project Muse

How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. . . . If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that-for that-I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!
From the Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

They call them the haunted shores, these stretches of ... Ireland which rear up against the westward ocean. Mists gather here, and sea fog, and eerie stories. That’s not because there are more ghosts here than in other places, mind you. It’s just that people who live hereabouts are strangely aware of them.
Narration at the beginning of the movie, The Uninvited. Based on the novel by Dorothy Macardle.
Photo Credit: Mouser Gallery

The English language brings out the best in the Irish. They court it like a beautiful woman. They make it bray with donkey laughter. They hurl it at the sky like a paint pot full of rainbows, and then make it chant a dirge for man's fate and man's follies that is as mournful as misty spring rain crying over the fallow earth.
T. E. Kalem on Brendan Behan's 1958 play Borstal Boy.

"I just dress up what the Good Lord provides."
Legendary Irish course designer Eddie Hackett who designed the Ring of Kerry golf course pictured above
Photo Credit: Golf Travel Ireland.






Lord. take me where you want me to go;
Let me meet who you want me to meet;
Tell me what you want me to say;
and
Keep me out of your way.
Father Mychal Judge

So they were married-to be the more together- And found they were never again so much together, Divided by the morning tea, By the evening paper, By children and tradesmen's bills.
From Les Sylphides by Louis McNeice

It's impossible for a creative artist to be either a Puritan or a Fascist, because both are a negation of the creative urge. The only things a creative artist can be opposed to are ugliness and injustice.
Liam O'Flaherty

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no "brief candle" for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
G.B. Shaw








In memory of Countess Constance Georgina de Markievicz
"What has time to do with thee,
Who hast found the victors' way
To be rich in poverty,
Without sunshine to be gay,
To be free in a prison cell?
Nay, on that undreamed judgement day,
When, on the old-world's scrap-heap flung,
Powers and empires pass away,
Radiant and unconquerable
Thou shalt be young. "
by Eva Gore-Booth and written to her sister on her prison birthday, February, 1917: Having dispensed her possessions to the poor of Dublin, Countess de Markievicz died penniless in a public hospital on July 15 th 1927.

Ireland is where strange tales begin and happy endings are possible.
Charles Haughey in the Daily Telegraph, London, July 14, 1988

Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.
Oscar Wilde
Photo Credit: Visual Insights

It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked looking glass of a servant.
From Ulysses by James Joyce

“All her life she was to personify the best of her Irish heritage – a warm and generous heart, undauntable faith in her God, unswerving allegiance to the Democratic Party, heroic resiliency in trouble and always, always, an unquenchable sense of humor.” 
From “My Wild Irish Mother” by Mary Higgins Clark

James Joyce was a synthesizer, trying to bring in as much as he could. I am an analyzer, trying to leave out as much as I can.
Samuel Beckett

“Now Autumn's fire burns slowly along the woods
And day by day the dead leaves fall and melt.”
William Allingham
March 19, 1824 - November 18, 1889
Photo Credit: The Guardian - Poster Poems

Laughter is wine for the soul - laughter soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with seriousness - the hilarious declaration made by man that life is worth living.
Sean O'Casey
Irish dramatist
born on March 30, 1880 - died on September 18, 1964

The Irish Church of St. Patrick
I found in each great church moreo'er,
Whether on island or on shore,
Piety, learning, fond affection;
Holy welcome and kind protection.
I found the good lay monks and brothers
Ever beseeching help for others,
And in their keeping the holy word
Pure as it came from Jesus the Lord.
Written by Aldfred, king of the Northumbrian Saxons, who was educated in an Irish monastery. These lines were in reference to the Irish Church founded by St. Patrick.

People with a culture of poverty suffer much less from repression than we of the middle class suffer and indeed, if I may make the suggestion with due qualification, they often have a hell of a lot more fun than we have.
From The Freedom of the City by Brian Friel

A New Year's Toast
Stir the eggnog, lift the toddy,
Happy New Year, everybody.
by Phyllis McGinley
author of the poem "The Giveaway".

Christmas Eve
A cup of milk
And a wheaten cake,
And a spark of fire
For the Travellers' sake.
A door on the latch,
A light on the pane,
Lest the Traveller's pass
In the wind and rain.
Food for the fire
And candlelight
The Travellers' Blessing
On us this night.
By Ruth and Celia Duffin
From Escape, 1929
Photo Credit: Art.com/William Hole


Christmas can be celebrated in the school room with pine trees, tinsel and reindeers, but there must be no mention of the man whose birthday is being celebrated. One wonders how a teacher would answer if a student asked why it was called Christmas.
Ronald Reagan
NOTE: In June 1984, Reagan visited Ballyporeen, Ireland, to see documents that proved his great-grandfather, Michael Regan, had been born in a small hamlet in County Tipperary.
Photo caption & credit: A church in Ballyporeen from Roots Web.

In the dim past, mince pies were not round but oblong in shape and were meant to represent the manger where Jesus was born. Everything that went into making a pie had a connection with the gifts brought by the Three Wise Men. The candied peel represented gold, the mace stood for the frankincense and the cinnamon the myrrh.
Adapted from a Celtic Christmas edited by MMairtin O'Griofa.

It is an old maxim in the schools,
That flattery's the food of fools;
Yet now and then your men of wit
Will condescend to take a bit.
From Cadenus and Vanessa by Jonathan Swift

For our American visitors:
May your stuffing be tasty
May your turkey be plump,
May your potatoes and gravy
have nary a lump.
May your yams be delicious
and your pies take the prize,
and may your Thanksgiving dinner
stay off your thighs!
Author unknown

Now Autumn's fire burns slowly along the woods
And day by day the dead leaves fall and melt.
William Allingham

"I think people should be allowed to do what they want, as long as they don't do it in the street and frighten the horses."
Attributed to Oscar Wilde's Cleaning lady when she testified at his trial.

There are so many strange things in the world beyond our knowledge, and maybe there are ghosts too, though I do not understand why they should come back to this world when they have gone from it.
From The Western Island by Peig Sayers

In Ireland long ago every family that had the least pretension to respectability had a banshee of its own. Without one, its members would be regarded as not Irish at all, only upstarts, vagabonds and 'sprus.'
From Aoibheall the Banshee by Edmund Lenihan.

I met the Love-Talker one eve in the glen,
He was handsomer than any of our handsome young men,
His eyes were blacker than the sloe, his voice sweeter far
Than the crooning of old Kevin's pipes beyond in Coolnagar.
From 'The Love-Talker by Ethna Carbery

If curses came from the heart, it would be a sin. But it is from the lips they come, and we use them only to give force to our speech, and they are a great relief of the heart.
Attributed to Peig Sayers in 'The Western Island' by Robin Flower

What is that curling flower of wonder
As white as snow, as red as blood?
When death goes by in flame and thunder
And rips the beauty from the bud.
They left his blossom, white and slender
Beneath Glasnevin's shaking sod;
His spirit passed like sunset splendour
Unto the dead Fiannas' God.
Good luck be with you, Michael Collins,
Or stay or go you far away;
Or stay you with the folk of fairy,
Or come with ghosts another day.
Sir Shane Leslie
ED. NOTE: On August 24, as the remains of Michael Collins lying in a decorative oak coffin were slowly brought to Glasnevin Cemetery, a nation mourned. His assassination caused the history of Ireland to be changed irrevocably.

On Summer Sunday's afternoon
The old rock was a sight:
The boys and girls would congregate
With wild unfeigned delight
And pass the hours till milking time
When home they would return
With baskets filled with fraocháns
From the Rock of Carrickbyrne.
Lyrics from a Wexford ballad celebrating
Lughnasa and the closest Sunday to
August 1st. It was often called
"Fraughan Sunday" after the wild
blue berries that were ripe for picking
at this time.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die anymore than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
G. B. Shaw

What is called 'Irishness' can be understood only in relation to the homeland. There is a saying that you can take a boy out of Ireland but you cannot take Ireland out of the boy. In the long run, I believe geography counts for more than genes.
From Irish Folk Ways by E. Estyn Evans

This country of ours is no sand-bank thrown up by some caprice of earth. It is an ancient land, honoured in the archives of civilization , traceable into antiquity by its piety, its valour, and its sufferings. Every great European race has sent its stream to the river of the Irish mind.
From Literary and Historical Essays (1846) by Thomas Davis.

Galway City ...is to the discoverer of Ireland something like what Chapman's 'Homer' was to Keats. It's a clue, a provocation, an enticement.
From 'Galway of the Races by Robert Lynd.

In Ireland, for a few years more, we have a popular imagination that is fiery and magnificent and tender, so that those of us who wish to write start with a chance that is not given to writers in places where the springtime of the local life has been forgotten and the harvest is a memory only, and the straw has been turned into bricks.
From the intro to the Playboy of the Western World (1907) by John Millington Synge.

One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.
Dubliners by James Joyce

I know tolerably well what Ireland was, but have a very imperfect idea of what Ireland is.
John Stuart Mill - Letter to J. E. Caimes, 29 July 1864

My father was totally Irish, and so I went to Ireland once. I found it to be very much like New York (state), for it was a beautiful country, and both the women and men were good-looking.
James Cagney

The divine harbinger of summer - warm rain.
Kevin Myers - Irish Times

When Time who steals our years away
Shall steal our pleasures too,
The mem’ry of the past will stay,
And half our joys renew.
Thomas Moore
Died February 25, 1852 RIP

Company keeping under the stars at night has succeeded in too many places the good old irish custom of visiting, chatting and story-telling from one house to another.
View of Archbishop Gilmartin of Tuam 1926, from Twentieth Century Ireland by Dermot Keogh

Love is never defeated, and I could add, the history of Ireland proves it.
Pope John Paul II from a speech to the people of Galway, September 1979.

"A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers."
John F. Kennedy
Photo credit & Caption: Allied World War II Cemetery, Normandy France/Peter Higgins

"A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart."
Jonathan Swift

And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels

I was born on a storm-swept rock and hate the soft growth of sun-baked lands where there is no frost in men’s bones.
Liam O'Flaherty
born on August 28, 1896. Died September 7th, 1984

"My Ulster blood is my most priceless heritage."
James Buchanan, 15th President of the United States

God gives the gifts where He finds the vessel empty enough to receive them."
C.S. Lewis

I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting.
President Reagan (RIP)

"What were we celebrating? At this rate, the Angelus doesn't have a chance of remaining on RTÉ if we've managed to get St. Patrick out of his own parade."
Irish Times reporter Stephen Harris on not seeing a single figure of the saint in the 1998 Dublin parade.

"Too young to die. Too drunk to live"
Renee McCall of the Daily Express on the passing of Brendan Behan on this date in 1964 at the age of 41.

There's no reason to bring religion into it. I think we ought to have as great a regard for religion as we can, so as to keep it out of as many things as possible.
From the Plough and the Stars by Sean O'Casey

Ah, Ireland...That damnable, delightful country, where everything that is right is the opposite of what it ought to be
Benjamin Disraeli

"Real vision is the ability to see the invisible."
Jonathan Swift

Souls as White as Snow
Thoughts of childhood Christmases rekindle a warm glow
As I recall the magic of those days so long ago
The atmosphere within our home of happy expectation -
Of all the joys that lay ahead, so filled me with elation.
Coming up to Christmas, the shopping should be done,
Which meant the then rare pleasure of a journey into town
Where mother went from shop to shop buying Christmas treats
Fruit for the cakes and Christmas 'pud', some lemonade and sweets
Bread and herbs for stuffing, biscuits, chocolate and a 'Sup' -
To celebrate the 'Christmas' and cheer the adults up
Next preparation was confession, which enabled us to go
to receive Our Lord on Christmas morn, with souls as white as snow.
From "No Shoes in Summer." Anon. North Cork, 1940s.

Christmas Eve the feast began,
It was a lovely sight,
To see the cozy country homes
lit up by candlelight.
To hear the voices loud and shrill
as folks passed on their way,
Wishing each and everyone
A happy Christmas Day.
Their hearts were light,
their pockets too,
They did not seem to care,
They lived their simple Irish lives
with faith in God and prayer.
From Christmas 1922 by Kathleen Treanor

The English language brings out the best in the Irish. They court it like a beautiful woman. They make it bray with donkey laughter. They hurl it at the sky like a paint pot full of rainbows, and then make it chant a dirge for man’s fate and man’s follies that is as mournful as misty spring rain crying over the fallow earth.
T E Kalem

It is only an auctioneer that should admire all schools of art.
Oscar Wilde

When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious.
Edna O'Brien

I want peace and quiet. I want it so much I'd die for it.
Michael Collins

There are in every generation those who shrink from the ultimate sacrifice, but there are in every generation those who make it with joy and laughter and these are the salt of the generations.
Patrick Henry Pearse

Have you seen the tidy cottage in the straggling, dusty street,
Where the roses swing their censers by the door?
Have you heard the happy prattle and the tramp of tiny feet
As the sturdy youngsters romp around the floor?
Did you wonder why the wiree comes to sing his sweetest song?
Did the subtle charm of home upon you fall?
Did you puzzle why it haunted you the while you passed along?
There's a Little Irish Mother there; that's all.
From The Little Irish Mother by John O'Brien

Life springs from death; and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations.
Patrick Pearse

The shot Irishmen will now take their places beside Emmet and the Manchester Martyrs in Ireland, and beside the heroes of Poland and Sérbia and Belgium in Europe; and nothing in heaven or earth can prevent it.
George Bernard Shaw in a letter to the ‘Daily News’, May 1916

I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
Easter, 1916 by W.B. Yeats

A Toast to St. Patrick
Saint Patrick’s, the holy and tutelar man;
His beard down his bosom like Aaron’s ran.
Some from Scotland, some from Wales,
will declare that's from where he came,
But I care not, now he’s risen to fame.
The pride of the world and his enemies scorning,
I will drink to St Patrick, today, in the morning!
Anonymous

I'd wed you without herds,
without money or rich array,
And I'd wed you on a dewy morn
at day-dawn gray...
From Cashel of Munster by Samuel Ferguson

For your sweet sake, I will ignore
Every girl who takes my eye,
if it's possible, I implore
You do the same for me.

As I have given from my heart
Passion for which alone I live,
Let me now receive from you
The love you have to give.
Love of Ireland: Poems from the Irish by Brendan Kennelly

My love is like a cabbage
That's easy cut in two.
The leaves I'll give to others
But the heart I'll keep for you.
Oral poem from Tyrone

Of our conflicts with others we make rhetoric; of our conflicts with ourselves we make poetry.
William Butler Yeats

This is the time we dock the night
Of a whole hour of candlelight;
When song of linnet and thrush is heard -
And love stirs in the heart of a bird.
From The Turn of The Year
by Katherine Tynan

This is Christmas: not the tinsel, not the giving and receiving, not even the carols, but the humble heart that receives anew the wondrous gift, the Christ.
Frank McKibben

A long time away in a strange land and home is warm at Christmas and the lights are never so welcome as when you see them from a long time, long way off.
From the Age-Old Message by Pat Ingoldsby

A Christmas candle is a lovely thing;
It makes no noise at all,
But softly gives itself away;
While quite unselfish, it grows small.
Eva K. Logue

The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.
Attributed to Robert Lynd

I joined the British Army because she stood between Ireland and an enemy common to our civilization and I would not have her say she defended us while we did nothing but pass resolutions.
Francis Ledwidge

The contest on our side is not one of rivalry or vengeance, but of endurance. It is not those who can inflict the most, but those who can suffer the most who will conquer.
Inaugural speech of Cork Mayor Terence MacSwiney who died on hunger strike, October 25, 1920.

Hang the bard, and cut the punster,
Fling all rhyming to the deuce,
Take a business tour through Munster,
Shoot a landlord — be of use.
Richard D'Alton Williams - Advice to a Young Poet

There are only two dialects of Irish, plain Irish and toothless Irish, and, lacking a proper acquaintance with the latter, I think I missed the cream of the old man's talk.
From 'Leinster, Munster and Connaught' by Frank O'Connor

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
John F. Kennedy

When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.
Frank McCourt - Angela's Ashes

"All that praying you made us do," complained Maggie. "And making us go to Mass. And starving us on Good Friday...And making us feeling ashamed of our bodies and guilty about absolutely everything. No, Ma, you were the pits." Nuala glowed with pride, truly she had been the best of Catholic mothers.
Late Opening at The Last Chance Saloon by Marian Keyes
Photo Credit: Light Planet


I love everything that's old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines; and, I believe, Dorothy, you'll own I have been pretty fond of an old wife.
From Act I of She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith

The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.
Edmund Burke

Liberty without learning is always in peril; learning without liberty is always in vain.
John F. Kennedy

I found Ireland on her knees, I watched over her with eternal solicitude; I have traced her progress from injuries to arms and from arms to liberty.
Henry Grattan

I knew, by the smoke that so gracefully curl’d
Above the green elms, that a cottage was near;
And I said, “If there ’s peace to be found in the world,
A heart that was humble might hope for it here.”
Ballad Stanzas by Thomas Moore

It's a good thing to be able to take up your money in your hand and to think no more of it when it slips away from you than you would of a trout that would slip back into the stream.
Lady Augusta Gregory

Lovely the mantle of green
Our Lord spreads on the hillside!
Every spring the divine craftsman
Plumps its worn fleece.
The Hag of Beare - 9th century

We are ready to die and shall die cheerfully and proudly...You must not grieve for all of this. We have preserved Ireland’s honour and our own. Our deeds of last week¹ are the most splendid in Ireland’s history. People will say hard things of us now, but we shall be remembered by posterity and blessed by unborn generations.
Patrick Henry Pearse
¹Easter Uprising, April 24, 1916

I'm a good scholar when it comes to reading but a blotting kind of writer when you give me a pen.
John Millington Synge

All ye who love the springtime
and who but loves it well,
When the little birds do sing, and
the buds begin to swell
Think not ye ken its beauty, or know
its face so dear,
Till ye look upon old Ireland in the
dawning o' the year!
The Dawning of the Year
by Mary Elizabeth Blake

If you ever wondered where "Top o' the morning" came from, here it is:
T'anam chun Dia! but there it is-
The dawn on the hills of Ireland!
God's angels lifting the nights's black veil
From the fair, sweet face of my sireland!
O, Ireland! isn't it grand to look-
Like a bride in her rich adornin'!
With all the pent-up love of my heart
I bid you the top o'the morning'!
The Exile's Return
by John Locke

"Let no man write my epitaph.... When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written."
Robert Emmett
In honour of his birthday on March 4, this is excerpted from the speech given by Robert Emmett at his trial in September, 1803.

My advice to you concerning applause is this: enjoy it but never quite believe it.
Samuel Lover

If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.
Oscar Wilde

Men always want to be a woman's first love. Women have a more subtle instinct: What they like is to be a man's last romance.
Oscar Wilde

No Irish need apply!
The man that wrote it,wrote it well
The same was writ on the gates of hell
No Irish need apply!
This quote came from a reader who wanted to know who wrote this verse and if there was any more to the poem or song. We found several versions of the song, but did not find this particular stanza.
"Bekki B" found the origin.
It turns out that it isn't from the lyrics of a song. During the time of the Penal Laws, the town of Bandon in Co. Cork had a sign which said: Enter here, Turk, Jew or atheist, any man except a Papist.
Underneath those lines, some Irishman, fighting back with the only two things left that could not be stripped from him - his wit and his dignity - wrote: "The man who wrote this wrote it well, for the same is writ on the gates of Hell."

Imagination is a quality given a man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.
Oscar Wilde

I am a confirmed believer in blessings in disguise. I prefer them undisguised when I myself happen to be the person blessed; in fact, I can scarcely recognize a blessing in disguise except when it is bestowed upon someone else.
Robert Lynd

Meanings of Christmas
It might be easy to run away to a monastery, away from the commercialization, the hectic hustle, the demanding family responsibilities of Christmas-time. Then we would have a holy Christmas. But we would forget the lesson of the Incarnation, of the enfleshing of God—the lesson that we who are followers of Jesus do not run from the secular; rather we try to transform it. It is our mission to make holy the secular aspects of Christmas just as the early Christians baptized the Christmas tree. And we do this by being holy people—kind, patient, generous, loving, laughing people—no matter how maddening is the Christmas rush…
Fr. Andrew Greeley

Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.
Jonathan Swift

St. Patrick's Day is an enchanted time -- a day to begin transforming winter's dreams into summer's magic!
Adrienne Cook

Our Irish blunders are never blunders of the heart.
Maria Edgeworth

If you strike us down now we shall rise again and renew the fight. You cannot conquer Ireland. You cannot extinguish the Irish passion for freedom. If our deed has not been sufficient to win freedom, then our children will win it by a better deed.
Padraig Pearse - a leader of the 1916 Rebellion.
Photo Credit: Sinn Féin Bookshop

The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.
Oscar Wilde

Circumstances are the rulers of the weak; they are but the instruments of the wise.
Samuel Lover

I have my faults, but changing my tune is not one of them.
Samuel Beckett

Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.
C.S. Lewis

"...even as a partitioned small nation, we shall go on and strive to play our part in the world, continuing unswervingly to work for the cause of true freedom and for peace and understanding between all nations."
Eamon De Valera

No wise man ever wished to be younger.
Jonathan Swift

Ah, we men and women are like ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us in different directions.
Bram Stoker

We are all born mad. Some remain so.
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (1955)

When once the itch of literature comes over a man, nothing can cure it but the scratching of a pen.
Samuel Lover

I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper, and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.
Brendan Behan

When all the fuss has died down and the lads get back to I'm sure what will be a heroes' welcome, the wounds will heel and the wise man in the pub will say "Sure, 'twas only an oul match anyway!"
Contributed by an Irish reader after Spain defeated Ireland in the 2002 World Cup.

Hills as green as emeralds, cover the countryside,
Lakes as blue as sapphires are Ireland's special pride,
And rivers that shine like silver make Ireland look so fair,
But the friendliness of her people is the richest treasure there.
Contributed by Bea Sager

Ireland is a fruitful mother of genius, but a barren nurse.
John Boyle O'Reilly

A life making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing at all.
G.B. Shaw

The intellect is forced to choose: Perfection of the life, or of the work.
W. B. Yeats

I pedalled on towards Athlone through slashing rain across brown miles of harvested bog - looking like a child's dream of a world made of chocolate.
Dervla Murphy, A Place Apart, 1978

In doggerel and stout let me honour this country
though the air is so soft that it smudges the words.
Louis MacNeice

Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.
Samuel Butler

This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever.
Sigmund Freud (about the Irish)

There is an Irish way of paying compliments as though they were irresistible truths which makes what would otherwise be an impertinence delightful.
Katherine Tynan Hinkson

A lament in one ear, maybe, but always a song in the other.
Sean O'Casey

One wonders in this place, why anyone is left in Dublin, or London, or Paris where it would be better, one would think to live in a tent or hut, with this magnificent sea and sky, and to breathe this wonderful air which is like wine in one's teeth.
J. M. Synge

Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.
W. B. Yeats

A man who loses his money gains, at the least, experience, and sometimes, something better.
George Bernard Shaw

In Ireland, the inevitable never happens and the unexpected constantly occurs.
Sir John Pentland Mahaffy

A man without a blackthorn stick is a man without an expedient.



Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.
George Bernard Shaw