38 Ireland Travel Quotes

There’s something magical about Ireland that captivates the heart and soul of every traveler. From its lush green landscapes to its rich history and culture, the Emerald Isle offers an experience that lingers long after you've left its shores. To celebrate this enchanting destination, we’ve curated a collection of the top 38 Ireland travel quotes that perfectly capture its charm and allure. Whether you’re reminiscing about a past visit or dreaming of a future adventure, these quotes will transport you straight to the heart of Ireland. Join us as we journey through words, and let the spirit of Ireland inspire your wanderlust.

1. “To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart.” - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

2. “Out of Ireland have we come. Great hatred, little room,Maimed us at the start.I carry from my mother's wombA fanatic heart.” - William Butler Yeats

3. “Though the last glimpse of Erin with sorrow I see,Yet wherever thou art shall seem Erin to me;In exile thy bosom shall still be my home,And thine eyes make my climate wherever we roam.” - Thomas Moore

4. “Those in power write the history, while those who suffer write the songs.” - Frank Harte

5. “THAT crazed girl improvising her music.Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,Her soul in division from itselfClimbing, falling She knew not where,Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship,Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declareA beautiful lofty thing, or a thingHeroically lost, heroically found.No matter what disaster occurredShe stood in desperate music wound,Wound, wound, and she made in her triumphWhere the bales and the baskets layNo common intelligible soundBut sang, 'O sea-starved, hungry sea” - William Butler Yeats

6. “The heart of an Irishman is nothing but his imagination” - George Bernard Shaw

7. “… 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 Mc Sweeney

8. “Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam. A country without a language is a country without a soul.” - Pádraig Pearse

9. “The Celt, and his cromlechs, and his pillar-stones, these will not change much – indeed, it is doubtful if anybody at all changes at any time. In spite of hosts of deniers, and asserters, and wise-men, and professors, the majority still are adverse to sitting down to dine thirteen at a table, or being helped to salt, or walking under a ladder, of seeing a single magpie flirting his chequered tale. There are, of course, children of light who have set their faces against all this, although even a newspaperman, if you entice him into a cemetery at midnight, will believe in phantoms, for everyone is a visionary, if you scratch him deep enough. But the Celt, unlike any other, is a visionary without scratching.” - William Butler Yeats

10. “Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.” - James Joyce

11. “He saw the black water and the declining sun and the swan dipping down, its white wings flashing, and slowing and slowing till silver ripples carried it home. It was a scene which seemed the heart of this land. The lowing sun and the one star waking, white wings on a black water, and the smell of rain, and the long lane fading where a voice comes in the falling night.--Ireland, said Scrotes.--Yes, this is Ireland.” - Jamie O'Neill

12. “Cad é an mhaith dom eagla a bheith orm? Ní shaorfadh eagla duine ón mbás, dar ndóigh.” - Peig Sayers

13. “A ógánaigh...ná brisan ghloine ghlan'tá eadrainn(ní bhristear gloinegan fuil is pian)óir tá Neamhnó Ifreann thall'gus cén mhaith Neamhmura mairfidh ségo bráth?ní Ifreanngo hIfreanniar-Neimhe...(Impí)” - Caitlín Maude

14. “Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.” - W.H. Auden

15. “When I come out on the road of a morning, when I have had a night's sleep and perhaps a breakfast, and the sun lights a hill on the distance, a hill I know I shall walk across an hour or two thence, and it is green and silken to my eye, and the clouds have begun their slow, fat rolling journey across the sky, no land in the world can inspire such love in a common man.” - Frank Delaney

16. “My heart is quite calm now. I will go back.” - James Joyce

17. “I still don't know why we didn't hire a carto get around Ireland.""When I was a kid, I always dreamed about living in Ireland. I used to pretend I was one ofthe traveling people, driving my gypsy wagon from village to village. Used to picture a darkgypsy kidnapping me and having his way with me. Exciting stuff." Katy grinned at her. "Couldstill happen, you know.""Katy, we have a horse that's so laid-back I have to keep checking to see if he's dead.” - Nina Bangs

18. “Beatha- do Mháire Mhic Amhlaoibh,An Fál Mór, Co. Mhaigh Eo. - Níor airigh tú caint ar an slabhcán? - arsa Mary Nell le hiontas,an slabhcán a bhailíodh sí ina gearrchaile diar charraigreacha an Fháil Mhóir,a thugadh sí abhaileis a ghearradh go mion, é a bhruith ainsin le deoirín uisce.Nuair a d'fhuaraíodh sé dhéanadh sí leac - an blas a bhíodh air leis an ngráinne salainn!Níor bhlais Mary Nell an slabhcán le dhá scór bliain:- Ní bhadrálann éinne thart anseo a thuilleadh leis,Róleitheadhach atá siad.Ach an stuif sin a bhíonns ag fear an tsiopaI bpotaí beaga a thigeann sé, dath pinc air - 'Yoghurt?'- Yoghurt. Yoghurt!M'anam go liveálfainn ar an stuif sin.M'anam go liveálfainn air. - ” - Tadhg Mac Dhonnagáin

19. “True the greater part of the Irish people was close to starvation. The numbers of weakened people dying from disease were rising. So few potatoes had been planted that, even if they escaped bight, they would not be enough to feed the poor folk who relied upon them. More and more of those small tenants and cottagers, besides, were being forced off the land and into a condition of helpless destitution. Ireland, that is to say, was a country utterly prostrated. Yet the Famine came to an end. And how was this wonderful thing accomplished? Why, in the simplest way imaginable. The famine was legislated out of existence. It had to be. The Whigs were facing a General Election.” - Edward Rutherfurd

20. “I believe hurling is the best of us, one of the greatest and most beautiful expressions of what we can be. For me that is the perspective that death and loss cast on the game. If you could live again you would hurl more, because that is living. You'd pay less attention to the rows and the mortgage and the car and all the daily drudge. Hurling is our song and our verse, and when I walk in the graveyard in Cloyne and look at the familiar names on the headstones I know that their ownders would want us to hurl with more joy and more exuberance and more (as Frank Murphy used to tell us) abandon than before, because life is shorter than the second half of a tournament game that starts at dusk.” - Dónal Óg Cusack

21. “I make my way back whistling. Gerry nods towards Mrs Brady who is standing beside the trolleys.Morning, Mrs Brady, I say cheerfully.I push her provisions out to the car.Things are something terrible, she says. You can't trust anybody.No.It's come to a sorry pass.It has.There's hormones in the beef and tranquillizers in the bacon. There's men with breasts and women with mickeys. All from eating meat.Now.I steer a path between a crowd of people while she keeps step alongside.Can you believe it - they're feeding the pigs Valium. If you boil a bit of bacon you have to lie down afterwards. Dear oh dear.Yes, I nod.The thought of food makes me ill.The pigs are getting depressed in those sheds. If they get depressed they lose weight. So they tranquillize them. Where will it end?I don't know, Mrs Brady, I say. I begin filling the boot. That's why I started buying lamb. Then along came Chernobyl. Now you can't even have lamb stew or you'll light up at night! I swear. And when they've left you with nothing safe to eat, next thing they come along and tell you you can't live in your own house.I haven't heard of that one, Mrs Brady.Listen to me. She took my elbow. It could all happen that you're in your own house and the next thing is there's radiation bubbling under the floorboards.What?It comes right at you through the foundations. Watch the yogurts. Did you hear of that?No.I saw it in the Champion. Did you not see it in the Champion?I might have.No wonder we're not right.I brought the lid of the boot down. She sits into the car very decorously and snaps her bag open on her lap. She winds down the window and gives me 50p for myself and £1 for the trolley.” - Dermot Healy

22. “Tom looked more and more like a rabbi. As is the way of men of character in provincial towns, he tended to become a collection of mannerisms, a caricature of himself.” - Frank O'Connor

23. “a grin that wasn't natural, and that combined in a strange way affection and arrogance, the arrogance of the idealist who doesn't realize how easily he can be fooled.” - Frank O'Connor

24. “Who're them?" says he to the curate."Them are the fallen angels," says the curate.They had a human form, no wings. God took the wings off of 'em after Lucifer rebelled - that way they couldn't go back, d'you see. They had no wings. But there was so many of 'em that you couldn't drive a knife down between 'em. They were as thick as hair on a dog's back. They were the finest people he ever seen. And whatever way he looked at 'em, some o' the finest girls he ever seen was in it, he said. They had to be good-looking, you know! 'Twas the sin o' pride put Lucifer down, d'you see. The best-looking angel in Heaven, 'twas the sin o' pride put him down. I s'pose they were nearly all as good-looking.” - Eddie Lenihan

25. “Then the woman in the bed sat up and looked about her with wild eyes; and the oldest of the old men said: 'Lady, we have come to write down the names of the immortals,’ and at his words a look of great joy came into her face. Presently she, began to speak slowly, and yet eagerly, as though she knew she had but a little while to live, and, in English, with the accent of their own country; and she told them the secret names of the immortals of many lands, and of the colours, and odours, and weapons, and instruments of music and instruments of handicraft they held dearest; but most about the immortals of Ireland and of their love for the cauldron, and the whetstone, and the sword, and the spear, and the hills of the Shee, and the horns of the moon, and the Grey Wind, and the Yellow Wind, and the Black Wind, and the Red Wind. ("The Adoration of the Magi")” - W.B. Yeats

26. “I was born Katie O’Reilly,” she began. “Poor Irish, but proud of it. I boarded the Titanic at Queenstown as a third class passenger with nothing more than the clothes on my back. And the law at my heels.” Titanic Rhapsody” - Jina Bacarr

27. “Iar gclos báis Mháirei dtuairim cháich má fágbhadh m'ainnir faoi fhód,níor bhuadhaigh bás ar Mháire im mheabhair-se fós.” - Pádraigín Haicéad

28. “World is suddener than we fancy it.” - Louis MacNeice

29. “Ireland Quinn Brady," he finally moved forward with an extended pointer finger to push me back down. "You are exceptional and beautiful and everything I wish I could be. I cant believe that you happened to me, and I promise every tomorrow we have together will be better than the last. This I will tell you over and over and over again until I take my last breath. I love you.” - Leah Crichton

30. “Cowan son of Branieucc, you're the only one of my people that I know for sure still lives.” - Sandi Layne

31. “Be just before you are generous.” - James Joyce

32. “She took the sea with herNot beaches but the greyrelentless Irish sea,its rhythm and the crying gulls.” - Caroline Davies

33. “Ireland is but an island off the coast of Cape Clear.” - Chuck Kruger

34. “Fookin' Irish, they're a race of political masochists, they love their fookin' chiefs and princes an' a strong hand belting. It's like the man said in the play, Abair and focal republic i nGaoluinn?” - Gwyneth Jones

35. “And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. (“How to Write with Style”. Essay, 1985)” - Kurt Vonnegut

36. “But once you cross the Shannon - even though geographically you have only come a short distance - different rules of time apply, and most people still understand the crucial secret of human happiness: that it's better to do a few things slowly, than a lot of things fast.” - Pete McCarthy

37. “The best thing about flying first class....was that you could be as nutty as a fruitcake and were still treated like the Queen of Sheba.” - Sarah-Kate Lynch

38. “It wasn't that I didn't feel like sharing. Mostly I just figured they couldn't do anything about it, so there was no point in worrying them. I said, 'A wee little bit,' instead, in honor of being in Ireland, where one adjective was never enough if three would do.” - C.E. Murphy