#irish

We Irish prefer embroideries to plain cloth. To us Irish, memory is a canvas--stretched, primed, and ready for painting on. We love the "story" part of the word "history," and we love it trimmed out with color and drama, ribbons and bows. Listen to our tunes, observe a Celtic scroll: we always decorate our essence. ↗

— Frank Delaney

#love

Wherever they went the Irish brought with them their books, many unseen in Europe for centuries and tied to their waists as signs of triumph, just as Irish heroes had once tied to their waists their enemies' heads. Where they went they brought their love of learning and their skills in bookmaking. In the bays and valleys of their exile, they reestablished literacy and breathed new life into the exhausted literary culture of Europe. And that is how the Irish saved civilization. ↗

— Thomas Cahill

#irish #literacy #life

A ógánaigh... ná bris an ghloine ghlan 'tá eadrainn (ní bhristear gloine gan fuil is pian) óir tá Neamh nó Ifreann thall 'gus cén mhaith Neamh mura mairfidh sé go bráth? ní Ifreann go hIfreann iar-Neimhe... (Impí) ↗

— Caitlín Maude

#gaeilge #grá #impí #ireland #irish

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

#fuck #irish #off #samuel #writer

The Irish seem to have more fire about them than the Scots. ↗

— Sean Connery

#fire #irish #more #scots #seem

My Irish derivation has nothing to do with me. Why should it? ↗

— Carroll O'Connor

#me #nothing #should #why

My wife and I both come from Irish families. There are two kinds of Irish families: the hitting kind and the kidding kind. If you're fortunate - and both of us are - you come from the kidding kind of Irish family. ↗

— P. J. O'Rourke

#come #families #family #fortunate #hitting

Irish women are always carrying water on their heads, and always carrying their husbands home from pubs. Such things are the greatest posture-builders in the world. ↗

— Peter O'Toole

#carrying #greatest #heads #home #husbands

Well, we know that eighteen years after that solemn declaration it was disregarded, and the Irish Parliament, which lasted for five hundred years, was destroyed by the Act of Union. Gentlemen, the Act of Union was carried by force and fraud, by treachery and falsehood. ↗

— John Edward Redmond

#after #carried #declaration #destroyed #disregarded

You ask people what their ethnicity is, and a lot of Scots-Irish people either don't know or if they know it they just don't acknowledge it. It's not something they really identify with. They're just plain old Americans, plain vanilla. I don't think they are a self-conscious voting bloc. ↗

— John Shelton Reed

#ask #bloc #either #ethnicity #i