Irish Author Quotes

It was the hour when gauze-winged insects are born that only live for a day.

Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany

But if I'm content with a little, Enough is as good as a feast.

Isaac Bickerstaffe

Who dreads to the dust returning?
Who shrinks from the sable shore,
Where the high and haughty yearning
Of the soul can sting no more?

Bartholomew Dowling

There has been no lack of courage in Ireland; there never is, but even our courage has a fatal quality.

Susan L. Mitchell

A place in thy memory, dearest,
Is all that I claim;
To pause and look back when thou hearest
The sound of my name.

The reconciling grave swallows distinction first, that made us foes; there all lie down in peace together.

Thomas Southerne

Find earth where grows no weed, and you may find a heart wherein no error grows.

James Sheridan Knowles

An Irishman I am, begora! With a heart and a spirit on
me not crushed be a hundred years of oppression. I'll be getting me
shillelagh out next, wait'll you see.

Martin McDonagh

Far as distress the soul can wound
'Tis pain in each degree;
Bliss goes but to a certain bound,
Beyond is agony.

Frances Greville

The reporter told us how
The cross woman's peasant origins
Came out at the last, shouting
At her executioners 'I have been
A mother to you and this is how
You thank me for it.'

Bernard O'Donoghue

The young don't know what age is, and the old forget what youth was.

Seumas MacManus

For the future I cease, Death approaches with little delay,
Since the dragons of Laune and Lane and Lee are destroyed;
I'll follow the heroes far from the light of day,
The princes my ancestors followed before Christ died.

Didn't I seize the fire of ideas and make them leap, tear, fly, sing

A man who keeps a diary pays, Due toll to many tedious days; But life becomes eventfulthen, His busy hand forgets the pen. Most books, indeed, are records less Of fulness than of emptiness.

William Allingham

A man should never boast of his courage, nor a woman of her virtue, lest their doing so should be the cause of calling their possession of them into question.

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

I was most incorrigibly devoted to versifying, and all my spouse's wholesome admonitions had no manner of effect on me; in short, I believe this scribbling itch is an incurable disease...

Letitia Pilkington

When the clouds shake their hyssops, and the rain
Like holy water falls upon the plain,
'Tis sweet to gaze upon the springing grain
And see your harvest born.
And sweet the little breeze of melody
The blackbord puffs upon the budding tree,
While the wild poppy lights upon the lea
And blazes 'mid the corn.

Francis Ledwidge

Human nature is a mystic duality, half animal, half angel; a worm, a God; and the contrast and strife between the two natures is never so marked as in the gifted.

One way of looking at poetic periods is to notice what contemporary interests and knowledge penetrate the best verse written at the time and what moods are permitted in treating of these matters.

Heaven above is softer blue
Earth around is sweeter green;
Something lives in every hue
Christless eyes have never seen
Birds with gladder songs o'erflow
Flowers with deeper beauties shine. Since I know, as now I know, I am His, and He is mine.

George Wade Robinson

Ah! my heart is weary waiting,
Waiting for the May:
Waiting for the pleasant rambles
Where the fragrant hawthorn brambles,
Where the woodbine alternating,
Scent the dewy way;
Ah! my heart is weary, waiting,
Waiting for the May.

Denis Florence MacCarthy

To grow
a second tongue, as
harsh a humiliation
as twice to be born.

Whatsoever contradicts my sense,
I hate to see, and never can believe.

Wentworth Dillon, 4th Earl of Roscommon

Love, I thought to myself abstractedly. Not 'This is love' or 'Is this love?' Not a sentence, not a certainty, not a thought with moving parts or direction. Just love, all of it, as it is. Whether it's enough or not. Wthether it's real or we're making it up. However shoddy it gets, or bent out of shape. It's still extraordinary. However foolish, however vain. However badly it ends. Love.

Some of us made it
To the forest edge, but many of us did not
Make it, although their unborn children did—
Such as you whom the camp commandant branded
Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols. Jesus, break his fall:
There—but for the clutch of luck—go we all.