44 Inspiring Quotes About Ireland

Ireland, with its lush landscapes, rich history, and vibrant culture, has long been a source of inspiration for poets, writers, and travelers alike. From the rolling hills of the countryside to the bustling streets of Dublin, the Emerald Isle offers a tapestry of experiences that resonate with both locals and visitors. In this post, we've gathered a curated collection of 44 inspiring quotes that capture the spirit, charm, and mystique of Ireland. Whether you're seeking a touch of Irish wisdom, a sprinkle of humor, or a glimpse into the soul of the nation, these quotes offer a window into the heart of Ireland, inviting you to explore and celebrate its unique allure.

1. “The sea, the snotgreen sea, the scrotumtightening sea.” - James Joyce

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

3. “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

4. “[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

5. “The tune was sad, as the best of Ireland was, melancholy and lovely as a lover's tears.” - Nora Roberts

6. “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

7. “A face on him as long as a hare's back leg.” - Myles na gCopaleen

8. “Moderation, we find, is an extremely difficult thing to get in this country.” - Flann O'Brien

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

10. “There had been a time, until 1422, when a number of both Gaelic and Anglo-Irish students attended Oxford and Cambridge in England. But fellow students had complained that Irish living together in large numbers sooner or later got noisy and violent and there was no handling them. Accordingly, the universities imposed a quota system on Irishman, and decreed that those admitted must be scattered around among non-compatriots: exclusively Irish halls of residence were banned.” - Emily Hahn

11. “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

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

13. “They'd listen silenty, with grave faces: but once they'd turn to each other they'd smile cruelly. He couldn't have it both ways. He'd put himself outside and outside they'd make him stay. Neither brutality nor complaining could force a way in.” - John McGahern

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. “God and religion before every thing!' Dante cried. 'God and religion before the world.' Mr Casey raised his clenched fist and brought it down on the table with a crash.'Very well then,' he shouted hoarsely, 'if it comes to that, no God for Ireland!''John! John!' cried Mr Dedalus, seizing his guest by the coat sleeve. Dante stared across the table, her cheeks shaking. Mr Casey struggled up from his chair and bent across the table towards her, scraping the air from before his eyes with one hand as though he were tearing aside a cobweb. 'No God for Ireland!' he cried, 'We have had too much God in Ireland. Away with God!” - James Joyce

17. “An cinniúnt, is dócha: féach an féileacán úd thall atá ag foluain os cionn mo choinnle. Ní fada go loiscfear a sciatháin mhaiseacha: cá bhfios dúinne nach bhfuil a fhios sin aige, freisin?” - Pádraic Ó Conaire

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

19. “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

20. “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

21. “Grey morning dulled the bay. Banks of clouds, Howth just one more bank, rolled to sea, where other Howths grumbled to greet them. Swollen spumeless tide. Heads that bobbed like floating gulls and gulls that floating bobbed like heads. Two heads. At swim, two boys.” - Jamie O'Neill

22. “The host is rushing 'twixt day and night,And where is there hope or deed as fair?Caoilte tossing his burning hair,And Niamh calling Away, come away.” - W.B. Yeats

23. “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

24. “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

25. “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

26. “...early medieval Ireland sounds like a somewhat crazed Wisconsin, in which every dairy farm is an armed camp at perpetual war with its neighbors, and every farmer claims he is a king.” - David Willis McCullough

27. “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

28. “When they had finished they made me take notes of whatever conversation they had quoted, so that I might have the exact words, and got up to go, and when I asked them where they were going and what they were doing and by what names I should call them, they would tell me nothing, except that they had been commanded to travel over Ireland continually, and upon foot and at night, that they might live close to the stones and the trees and at the hours when the immortals are awake.” - W.B. Yeats

29. “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

30. “The matter on which I judge people is their willingness, or ability, to handle contradiction. Thus Paine was better than Burke when it came to the principle of the French revolution, but Burke did and said magnificent things when it came to Ireland, India and America. One of them was in some ways a revolutionary conservative and the other was a conservative revolutionary. It's important to try and contain multitudes. One of my influences was Dr Israel Shahak, a tremendously brave Israeli humanist who had no faith in collectivist change but took a Spinozist line on the importance of individuals. Gore Vidal's admirers, of whom I used to be one and to some extent remain one, hardly notice that his essential critique of America is based on Lindbergh and 'America First'—the most conservative position available. The only real radicalism in our time will come as it always has—from people who insist on thinking for themselves and who reject party-mindedness.” - Christopher Hitchens

31. “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

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

33. “Do not hope to understand the source of my understanding.” - Thomas Fitzgerald

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

35. “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

36. “...I live in Ireland every day in a drizzly dream of a Dublin walk...” - John Geddes

37. “Go back to bed, Cowan. I want no promises from you.” - Sandi Layne

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

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

40. “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

41. “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

42. “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

43. “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

44. “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