Quotes About Irish

My mother was very proud of being Irish and being a Gunnigan in a straightforward way.

the Irish... qualities are hidden, besmirched, by that what has been imposed upon us, just as the fine, splendid surface of Ireland is besmirched by our towns and villages

Speaking in Irish he explained that while he would like to deliver his speech in Irish he did not have enough command of the tongue to express himself properly and therefore he was going to continue in English. However when he spoke in English it was to begin by saying: 'Some of the members do not know Irish, I think, and consequently what I shall say will be in English.

The road to the Castle is paved with anonymous letters, deriving from the besetting Irish sin, jealousy.

Lloyd George never felt secure enough to adopt such a policy and place the various forces in Ireland under a unified command as both the generals and the revamped Irish Executive demanded.

This missive, the first time the Pope had spoken on the Irish question, was highly unwelcome to the British. Curzon thought it 'just the sort of casuistic performance that might have been expected from the Vatican

The Committee found two problems: On the one hand the Government was committed against any solution which would break with the unity of the Empire. On the other, it was committed that Ulster must not be forced under the rule of an Irish parliament against its will.

whenever I wanted to know what the Irish people wanted I had only to examine my own heart and it told me straight off what the Irish people wanted.

whenever I wanted to know what the Irish people wanted I had only to examine my own heart and it told me straight off what the Irish people wanted.' What an examination of his heart on this occasion told him was required was his re-election so that he could pick a new Cabinet and 'throw out that Treaty'.

his attitude towards the Treaty was similarly influenced by his determination to show that he, not Collins, was the real Irish leader. Hence the President's refusal to accept the Treaty even under the terms urged upon him by Sean T. O'Kelly.

He wanted to restore a 'democratic social polity, with the exaltation of the things of the mind and character... the essence of ancient Irish civilisation... must provide the keynote of the new.

The FBI had been a man's world—usually men of Irish or Italian heritage schooled by Jesuits and raised in a closed culture of police and priests.

A mob with clubs had chased a group of immigrant miners out of town in 1921. The whiff of socialism was enough to inflame the attackers. Irish laborers had helped to build the city; refugees of the Great Famine dug the ditch that would become the Wabash and Erie Canal, largest in the United States, connecting Evansville to Lake Erie, 460 miles to the north. But because of their religion, they were second-class citizens in the caste system that the Klan exploited in Evansville.

Of course now I realise I was wrong to take what the Irish books said at face value anyway; the Irish would deliberately paint a black picture of the English and indeed the English government would encourage that, and vice versa; anything to emphasise the difference between the two nations' identities, even if in geopolitical terms they are firm allies.

I have differences of opinion within my own family, an Irish Catholic family. So, I do respect those that disagree.

We Irish are too poetical to be poets; we are a nation of brilliant failures, but we are the greatest talkers since the Greeks.

The American definition of paganism is especially suspect among the Irish, too, when it seems to imply adherence to some British cult. The fact that most of the self-proclaimed witches in Ireland are English does not escape comment, and notice is also given to the number of American tourists who traipse through on pilgrimages to these minor celebrities and make no inquires about local beliefs.

I'm not so much a rock star, d'ya know what I mean? I play Irish music. There's really no age when you stop playing Irish music. Even if I retired from playing onstage, I'd still be singing in pubs.

The true pinnacle of the illuminated manuscript genre is the Book of Kells, created around 800 in an Irish monastery.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then a young Kennedy appointee in the Labor Department, spoke for most when he said, "I don't think there's any point in being Irish if you don't know the world is going to break your heart eventually." During those four cold, bleak November days, all Americans were Irish.

Haley remembered another bit of Irish wisdom, something her dad said all the time: "Never bolt your door with a boiled carrot!" She

She offers me a bull's-eye sweet, which she's stashed in her apron pocket with a half-dozen half-smoked Afton butts—a mix of flavors I'll never forget. On the front of the yellow cigarette box is a poem by Robert Burns that Gram likes to sing to an old Irish tune: Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes. Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise.

Irish lace, hanging in the windows, filters the afternoon light, softening the lines on her face.

belting out the Irish national anthem—"We're children of a fighting race, / That never yet has known disgrace, / And as we march, the foe to face, / We'll chant a soldier's song"—