Tomorrow is Saint Patrick’s Day, the one day each year where we all get to be Irish – and how lucky we all are for the opportunity. The Irish are one of the most fascinating and distinct cultures in the world. If you have even a bit of Irish blood running through your veins, then you’ve got something special. As Canadians, more than a few of us can trace at least some part of our lineage back to the Emerald Isle. So to celebrate those of us who are Irish, those who pretend they are, and those who like the company of the people with some of the most perfect quotes about the magic of being Irish.
- “It’s not that the Irish are cynical. It’s rather that they have a wonderful lack of respect for everything and everybody.” — Brendan Behan
- “Our Irish blunders are never blunders of the heart.” — Maria Edgeworth
- “There is an Irish way of paying compliments as though they were irresistible truths which makes what would otherwise be an impertinence delightful.” — Katharine Tynan Hinkson
- “Ireland sober is Ireland stiff.” – James Joyce
- “Every St. Patrick’s Day every Irishman goes out to find another Irishman to make a speech to.” — Shane Leslie
- “In Ireland, the inevitable never happens, and the unexpected constantly occurs.” — John Pentland Mahaffy
- “I think there’s something about the Irish experience — that we had to have a sense of humor or die. That’s what kept us going — a sense of absurdity, rather than humor.” — Frank McCourt
- “My one claim to originality among Irishmen is that I have never made a speech.” — George Moore
- “I am troubled, I’m dissatisfied, I’m Irish.” — Marianne Moore
- “Many people die of thirst but the Irish are born with one.” – Spike Mulligan
- “Irishness is not primarily a question of birth or blood or language; it is the condition of being involved in the Irish situation, and usually of being mauled by it.” — Conor Cruise O’Brien
- “I’m an Irish Catholic, and I have a long iceberg of guilt.” — Edna O’Brien
- “I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way: by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could.” — George Bernard Shaw
- “Ireland is a fruitful mother of genius, but a barren nurse.” — John Boyle O’Reilly
- “An Irishman’s heart is nothing but his imagination.” — George Bernard Shaw
- “There is no language like the Irish for soothing and quieting.” — John Millington Synge
- “I am Irish by race but the English have condemned me to talk the language of Shakespeare.” — Oscar Wilder
- “Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” – W.B. Yeats