Top 100 Quotes About The Irish
#1. Do you know that an Irishman always respond to a question with another?"
And the Irish guy replies "Who told you that?
Cathy Kelly
#2. The Irish are the niggers of Europe, lads.
Roddy Doyle
#3. James Joyce once called Guinness stout "the wine of Ireland." Indeed it's one of the most successful beers worldwide. Ten million glasses of this ambrosial liquid are consumed with great gusto each day.
Rashers Tierney
#4. What we call the Irish Brogue is no sooner discovered, than it makes the deliverer, in the last degree, ridiculous and despised; and, from such a mouth, an Englishman expects nothing but bulls, blunders, and follies.
Jonathan Swift
#5. The Irish tell the story of a man who arrives at the gates of heaven and asks to be let in St. Peter says, "Of course, just show us your scars." The man says, "I have no scars". St. Peter says, "What a pity was there nothing worth fighting for"?
Martin Sheen
#6. The basic policy of the British Government was that since the majority of people in Northern Ireland wished to remain in the United Kingdom, that was that. We asked what would happen if the majority wanted something else, if the majority wanted to see Irish unity.
John Hume
#7. One Kerry man seduced and was taking her to the ball. She felt like Cinderella it had taken her 16 and half years to get him to take her out anywhere not a mind to the school ball.
Annette J. Dunlea
#8. I'm just following the Irish tradition of songwriting, the Irish way of life, the human way of life. Cram as much pleasure into life, and rail against the pain you have to suffer as a result. Or scream and rant with the pain, and wait for it to be taken away with beautiful pleasure ...
Shane MacGowan
#9. The typical Irish peasant ate about 10 pounds of potatoes each day and soon towered in physical size over their rural English equivalents who mainly ate bread.
Rashers Tierney
#10. You can have Irish identity in the north and also have your Irish passport.
Seamus Heaney
#11. I had wanted to write English crime novels based on the American hard-boiled style, and for the first two novels about Brixton, the critics didn't actually know I was Irish.
Ken Bruen
#12. So you're the little smart ass from Poleglass.
I wanted to point out he sounded like Dr. Seuss but bit my lip and remembered the warning the old lady gave me.
David Louden
#13. Most criminals are stupid. They creep $500,000 homes in the Garden District, load up two dozen bottles of gin, whiskey, vermouth, and Collins mix in a $2,000 Irish linen tablecloth and later drink the booze and throw the tablecloth away.
James Lee Burke
#14. If you are British, you soon get used to people not loving you. The Irish remind us of offenses from 100 years ago. Perhaps we should react to what the French did to us even longer ago.
Mick Jagger
#15. If you want to mimic spoons in a drawer, I promise I won't think anythin' of it."
She realized that curling the same way they'd fit much better. She sighed. "Okay, but I get to be the big spoon. I don't want to accidentally bump into your ... "
"Knife?" he supplied.
Ashlyn Chase
#16. Exquisitely embroidered tapestries lined the walls of Medb's bedroom, but their impact was somewhat reduced by the room's ambience. A musky odor with pungent accents of stale piss.
David H. Millar
#17. I seriously believe that you will retard the course of civilisation in Ireland by preventing the Irish people from having one good look at themselves in my nicely polished looking glass.
James Joyce
#18. I don't really go around feeling very Irish at all. I don't go to Irish pubs. I've lived so many places, and I'm still so curious about the bigger world. It's grand to be alive in a time when mobility is so accessible.
Stuart Townsend
#19. As in some Irish houses, where things are so-so,
One gammon of bacon hangs up for a show;
But, for eating a rasher of what they take pride in,
They'd as soon think of eating the pan it is fried in.
Oliver Goldsmith
#20. Most actors here go to the West Coast; I ended up going to Ireland. My buddies who left drama school, they had this arrogance - 'We don't want to typecast ourselves.' But I said, 'I want to do Irish parts. That's the thing that's gonna give me the leg up.'
Brian F. O'Byrne
#21. If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.
Oscar Wilde
#22. It was Chase who had obtained the information from the girl's boyfriend during a party in an Irish pub, simply by using his British friendliness and charm.
Stefania Mattana
#23. My wife's a loving, funny, Irish-spirited person, and I'm still surprised at some of the things she says. She makes me laugh every day.
Gary Sinise
#24. My family calls me Declan. But most people call me E.C. I think it comes from my dad. It's an Irish convention. You usually call the first child by the initials.
Elvis Costello
#25. Extraordinary scenes there at the end. I think some of the crowd chanting 'Italy! Italy!' were actually Irish.
Tom McGurk
#26. Have you ever felt like you could walk through Hell and not get burned, or jump in a shark tank, causing the Great Whites to walk on land?... That's how I feel...like the baddest motherfucker that ever wore human skin." --Charlie Higgins 'Irish Demon
Jason E. Felts
#27. But listen well. In Tir na nOg, because there is no sorrow, there is no joy.
Do you hear the meaning of the seachain's song?
Alexandra Ripley
#28. My family, they're story tellers. My mom is Irish, and my dad is Italian. In my family, we weren't allowed to watch TV while we ate - we had to sit around the table and tell stories about our day.
Meg Cabot
#29. The majority of the members of the Irish parliament are professional politicians, in the sense that otherwise they would not be given jobs minding mice at crossroads.
Flann O'Brien
#30. It was a kiss that slowed down as it went, a great, long adoring kiss, Tadhg slanting his mouth first to one side, then the other, drowning her in the unyielding, unstoppable claiming of his kiss.
Kris Kennedy
#31. In the spirit of the Irish people, Osama bin Laden, you can kiss my royal Irish ass!
Mike Moran
#32. I always thought the biggest failing of Americans was their lack of irony. They are very serious there! Naturally, there are exceptions ... the Jewish, Italian, and Irish humor of the East Coast.
Colin Firth
#33. Islam - a religion horribly misrepresented by terrorists, which is like the IRA saying they represented Irish people. Islam is a BEAUTIFUL religion. would make you cry it's so beautiful ... and gentle.
Sinead O'Connor
#34. The Board would like to come back and see you tomorrow, Ariana,' she mimicked. 'Any more questions?'
'Yes,' she answered in the Warden's Irish accent, 'I'd just like to know why I'm such an arsehole.
Claire Merle
#35. Our fifty principal cities contain 39.3 per cent of our entire German population, and 45.8 per cent of the Irish. Our ten larger cities only nine per cent of the entire population, but 23 per cent of the foreign.
Josiah Strong
#36. His absence from her for so many weeks had had such an effect upon him that his demands, his desires had grown; and only the night before, as his ship steamed, beneath summer stars, in sight of the Irish coast, he had felt all the force of his particular necessity. He
Henry James
#37. Interestingly, some of the worst anti-Irish discrimination came from the Scotch-Irish, who wanted to make clear that they were a different group from the impoverished newcomers.
Ryan Hackney
#38. Hope is at the bottom of the Pandora's box of Irish troubles, and I believe proudly and firmly in the ultimate destinies of my country.
Katharine Tynan
#39. 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
#40. 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
#41. I was freelancing for years in Cork and around. I also wrote freelance pieces for 'The Irish Times.'
Kevin Barry
#42. 'Ulysses' is the greatest anti-racist text in the English language, and it challenges right from the beginning the vicious racism which lies near the foundations of the Irish Free State and of the Irish republic.
Tom Paulin
#43. Eternal is the fact that the human creature born in Ireland and brought up in its air is Irish. I have lived for twenty years in Ireland and for seventy-two in England; but the twenty came first and in Britain I am still a foreigner and shall die one.
George Bernard Shaw
#44. The whole island is spotted with derelict cottages and abandoned churches like this one. They sit in pastures as invisible to the Irish as a mother is to a teenage girl.
Skyler White
#46. You think we live in Norway or something? Amir Jordan is Pakistani. There's also an Asian guy, some Puerto Ricans, and the starting left wing has, like, carrot-hair. he must be Irish. It's the whole UN over there.
Sarah Ockler
#47. It's simply this:
the Irish kiss,
a snog o' bliss,
be blessed luck
from any miss.
Richelle E. Goodrich
#48. The first play I wrote was called 'Twenty-five.' It was played by our company in Dublin and London, and was adapted and translated into Irish and played in America.
Lady Gregory
#49. His eldest sister (who modestly prefers to be identified here as a Tuckahoe homemaker) has asked me to describe him as looking like 'the blue-eyed Jewish-Irish Mohican scout who died in your arms at the roulette table at Monte Carlo.
J.D. Salinger
#50. My version of an Irish exit has an air of deception to it, because it includes my asking loudly, "Where's the bathroom?" and making theatrical looking-around gestures like a lost foreign tourist. But then, instead of finding the bathroom, I sneakily grab my coat and leave.
Mindy Kaling
#51. I think women are in much the same place in the Irish theater as they are everywhere else. Certainly, we have wonderful Irish writers, and we have quite a number of Irish women directors. But there could be more, and there should be more.
Garry Hynes
#52. Being Irish and a citizen of the world, has made me truly appreciate Irish culture, music and history. Whether you're first, second generation Irish or even with no connection to Ireland, you should visit in 2013 for a unique experience.
Liam Neeson
#53. My mother's family were full-on Irish Catholics - faith in an elaborate old fashioned, highly conservative and madly baroque style. I sort of fell out of the tribe over women's rights and social justice issues when I was just 13 years old.
Geraldine Brooks
#54. Science words," I warned. "When you say 'hemoglobin' I just think of little Irish tricksters who live in caves, or Lord of the Rings."
"You mean 'goblin'?"
"Yes.
Temple West
#55. Ireland still remains the Holy Isle whose aspirations must on no account be mixed with the profane class-struggles of the rest of the sinful world ... the Irish peasant must not on any account know that the Socialist workers are his sole allies in Europe.
Friedrich Engels
#56. I hope 'The Voice' has a fifteen-year run, don't get me wrong. But I come from nothing, and maybe it's the Irish in me, but my attitude is always like, 'They'll figure me out soon.'
Carson Daly
#57. He was only the second or third in his sprawling family (their religion, Skip once said, was Irish Alcoholic) to ever go to college. Clan
Stephen King
#58. I grew up in a brick house. What's wrong with bricks? An Englishman took me aside and said, "You have to understand, all the bricklayers in England are Irish, and the English hate the Irish."
Carl Andre
#59. The English are not happy unless they are miserable, the Irish are not at peace unless they are at war, and the Scots are not at home unless they are abroad.
George Orwell
#61. The Danes and the Irish have a great simpatico, that's for sure.
Pierce Brosnan
#62. To be certain you're consuming the real deal, look carefully at the label. W-h-i-s-k-e-y indicates the heavenly liquid from the Emerald Isle. Without the "e," it's from Scotland or some other godforsaken place.
Rashers Tierney
#63. The Irish always jest even though they jest with tears.
Katharine Tynan
#64. The Irish move to the sound of the guns like salmon to the sea
Rudyard Kipling
#65. Irish tory employers hid[e] their sweatshops behind orange flags, and Irish home rule landlords us[e] the green sunburst of Erin to cloak their rack-renting in the festering slums of our Irish towns.
James Connolly
#66. Irish mythology is gorgeous, and so are the fairies, but they are very misrepresented in the U.K. They are not little creatures with wings.
Kate Thompson
#67. Other people have a nationality. The Irish and the Jews have a psychosis.
Brendan Behan
#68. The ancient Irish bards knew the Salmon of Knowledge as the giver of all life's wisdom. In the salmon's leap of understanding like a leap of faith, we can see ourselves "in our element," immersed in the river of life. The cycle of the salmon's journey reminds us that all rivers flow to the same sea.
Lynn Culbreath Noel
#69. I've got the Jewish guilt and the Irish shame and it's a hell of a job distinguishing which is which.
Kevin Kline
#70. I must admit, even though I'm the product of two Jewish parents, I think the Irish temper got in there somewhere, so I'm going to check Mom's genealogy.
Harvey Weinstein
#71. It's a great wonder to me, the Irish attachment to our history. What is it but a series of lamentations?
Dorothy Salisbury Davis
#72. For you can't hear Irish tunes without knowing you're Irish, and wanting to pound that fact into the floor.
Jennifer Armstrong
#73. Give Ireland back to the Irish, don't make them have to take it away.
Paul McCartney
#74. It's so tough to get movies made in Ireland anymore. A whole generation of Irish filmmakers doesn't have the resources to get a movie made.
Ciaran Hinds
#75. The original Guinness Brewery in Dublin has a 9,000-year lease on its property at a perpetual rate of 45 pounds per year--one of the best bargains in Irish commercial history!
Rashers Tierney
#76. It's a dimissive term to say the Irish team are plucky because it rings back to the old days when we went out and gave it a lash, set our hair on fire and ran after the opposition for 20 minutes and, if they survived that, they beat us by 50 points.
Eddie O'Sullivan
#77. I was raised Irish Catholic and went to Holy Names Academy, an all-girl's private Catholic school. I loved the nuns there and I love them to this day.
Kitty Kelley
#78. Humor has historically been tied to the mores of the day. The Yellow Kid was predicated on what people thought was funny about the immigrant Irish. When you're different in a society, you're funny.
Will Eisner
#79. I worked the drive-through at McDonald's and tried out different accents - Italian, Russian, Irish.
James Franco
#80. There are probably more annoying things than being hectored about African development by a wealthy Irish rock star in a cowboy hat, but I can't think of one at the moment.
Paul Theroux
#81. Chemical properties in the peat stop anything from rotting, so bogs are the "bank vaults" of Irish history, protecting whatever is put in them. A bog-cutter recently described finding a slab of butter, still edible after more than a hundred years.
Carmel McCaffrey
#82. When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived 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
#83. May you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you're dead. (Irish blessing)
Anonymous
#84. She later said: "If the Irish people vote in favour of gay marriage then I'll vote for gay marriage in the Oireachtas in order to recognise that position, but at the moment that is not recognised by the Constitution."
Lucinda Creighton
#85. The Irish have a flair for wringing from death the last drop of emotion and they do not quite understand those who react otherwise.
Dervla Murphy
#87. I had grandparents who were native Irish speakers, and also, two of the four grandparents were illiterate.
Brian Friel
#88. Half the people in London were not English anyway: they were Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Caribbean, Indian and Chinese. All the drug dealers came from islands: Maltese men sold pep pills,
Ken Follett
#89. The last thing we want to see, given the success of the peace process, is the return of installations along the Irish border.
Martin McGuinness
#90. Irish folk is probably the biggest influence musically that I've ever had. My mother's Irish. And when I was very young, both my brothers were very into traditional music, English and Irish. They were always playing music, so I was always brought up with it.
Kate Bush
#91. Those beloved, frumpish books gave off a smell that permeated the ward - like flannel pajamas that hadn't been changed for a month, or like Irish stew.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
#92. The Irish are never at peace but when they're fighting.
Mary Deasy
#93. I had that stubborn streak, the Irish in me I guess.
Gregory Peck
#94. The Irish Republican Army has kept every commitment made by its leadership.
Gerry Adams
#95. If you are a Northern Irish actor, maybe subconsciously more than consciously, you do have an instinctive responsibility at some point to tackle the recent history of where we have come from. It's not only a responsibility, but a privilege.
James Nesbitt
#96. I've had support from all sides, from people who call themselves Irish, from Northern Irish, to the whole of the UK, to people in America, and it would be terrible for me to segregate myself from one of those groups that support me so much.
Rory McIlroy
#97. My mother - the Irish side of the family - was very musical. My mother was a singer; there was music around the house all the time.
Len Cariou
#98. The first time I started listening to Irish music, I had a very strong connection. Strangely enough, there's a great many Japanese melodies and vocal styles that sound very much like Hungarian music. You start seeing all these cross-references and comparative, independent musical cultures.
Tom Waits
#99. Drop by Bell's for an Irish Kiss anytime. The best in England
JoAnne Kenrick
#100. At the heart of the Irish economy has always been the philosophy of tax competitiveness. On the cranky left, that is very annoying; I can see that.
Bono
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