"But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires."
— James Joyce

"In Ireland, you go to someone's house, and she asks you if you want a cup of tea. You say no, thank you, you're really just fine. She asks if you're sure. You say of course you're sure, really, you don't need a thing. Except they pronounce it ting. You don't need a ting. Well, she says then, I was going to get myself some anyway, so it would be no trouble. Ah, you say, well, if you were going to get yourself some, I wouldn't mind a spot of tea, at that, so long as it's no trouble and I can give you a hand in the kitchen. Then you go through the whole thing all over again until you both end up in the kitchen drinking tea and chatting.

In America, someone asks you if you want a cup of tea, you say no, and then you don't get any damned tea.

I liked the Irish way better."
— C.E. Murphy

"I think being a woman is like being Irish... Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the time."
— Iris Murdoch

"To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart."
— Daniel Patrick Moynihan

"Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why."
— James Joyce

"The sea, the snotgreen sea, the scrotumtightening sea."
— James Joyce (Ulysses)

"(Said of the Irish) "This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever."

(This quote may be misattributed as I have not yet found a reliable source that confirms that Freud made this comment about the Irish.)"
— Sigmund Freud

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

""There are only two things to worry about: either you are well or you are sick. If you are well, then there is nothing to worry about, but if you are sick there are two things for you to worry about: either you get well or you will die. If you get well, then there is nothing to worry about. If you die, then there are two things to worry about: either you go up or you go down. If you go up, then there is nothing to worry about. But if you go down, you will be so busy shaking hands with old friends you won't have time to worry."
"
— Irish Saying

"[Waiting for Godot] has achieved a theoretical impossibility—a play in which nothing happens, that yet keeps audiences glued to their seats. What's more, since the second act is a subtly different reprise of the first, he has written a play in which nothing happens, twice."
— Vivian Mercier

"Your battles inspired me - not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead."
— James Joyce

""Try again.
Fail Again.
Fail Better.""
— Samuel Beckett

"The earth makes a sound as of sighs and the last drops fall from the emptied cloudless sky. A small boy, stretching out his hands and looking up at the blue sky, asked his mother how such a thing was possible. Fuck off, she said."
— Samuel Beckett

"Drink is the bane of my country, it makes us forget, stumble, aim at our landlord, and miss him by an inch."
— Finbarr Glynn

"If God sends you down a stony path, may he give you strong shoes."
— Old Irish Saying

"There's no sense to being Irish unless you know the world's going to break your heart."
— Thomas Adcock

"Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. I reflected on the subject of my spare-time literary activities. One Beginning and one ending for a book was a thing I did not agree with. A good book may have three openings entirely dissimilar and inter-related only in the prescience of the author, or for that matter one hundred times as many endings."
— Flann O'Brien

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

"Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam. A country without a language is a country without a soul."
— Pádraig Pearse

"The Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad, for all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad."
— G.K. Chesterton

""All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.""
— Samuel Beckett

"I crossed the room, and what you did was to feel my hair over and over again and in different ways, touch it, with the palm of your hand... felt it, strands of hair, with your fingers, touched it as if it were cloth, the way a child touches its favorite surfaces."
— Edna O'Brien

"may you be in heaven a half 'n hour before the devil knows you're dead."
— IRISH TOAST

"As a member of the Protestant British squirearchy ruling Ireland, he was touchy about his Irish origins. When in later life an enthusiastic Gael commended him as a famous Irishman, he replied "A man can be born in a stable, and yet not be an animal." - "
— Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

"He had been thinking of how landscape moulds a language. It was impossible to imagine these hills giving forth anything but the soft syllables of Irish, just as only certain forms of German could be spoken on the high crags of Europe; or Dutch in the muddy, guttural, phlegmish lowlands."
— Alexander McCall Smith (Portuguese Irregular Verbs)

"[Kurt Cobain] had a lot of German in him. Some Irish. But no Jew. I think that if he had had a little Jew he would have [expletive] stuck it out."
— Courtney Love

"… in these new days and in these new pages a philosophical tradition of the spontaneity of speculation kind has been rekindled on the sacred isle of Éire, regardless of its creative custodian never having been taught how to freely speculate, how to profoundly question, and how to playfully define.

Spontaneity of speculation being synonymous with the philosophical-poetic, the philosophical-poetic with the rural philosopher-poet, and by roundelay the rural philosopher-poet thee with the spontaneity of speculation be.

And by the way of the rural what may we say?
A philosopher-poet of illimitable space we say.

Iohannes Scottus Ériugena the metaphor of old salutes you; salutes your lyrical ear and your skilful strumming of the rippling harp.

(Source: Hearing in the Write, Canto 19, Ivy-muffled)"
— Richard McSweeney (Hearing in the Write)

"♣ Where the tongue slips, it speaks the truth.
♣ What’s got badly, goes badly.
♣ He who can follow his own will is a king.
♣ Pity him who makes his opinion a certainty.
♣ A little help is better than a great deal of pity.
♣ Unwillingness easily finds an excuse.
♣ Forsake not a friend of many years for an acquaintance of a day.
♣ Falling is easier than rising.
♣ Have sense, patience, and self-restraint and no mischief shall come.
♣ A foot a rest meets nothing.
♣ True greatness knows gentleness.
♣ There is no joy without affliction."
— Andrews & McMeel

""In order to find his equal, an Irishman is forced to talk to God. Yes, Father? The Almighty says 'Don't change the subject, just answer the fucking question.' ""
— Braveheart