The Quotable Irish

The Irish do not want anyone to wish them well; they want everyone to wish their enemies ill. -Harold Nicolson.

When I get a very generous introduction like that, I explain that I’m emotionally moved, but on the other hand I’m Irish and the Irish are very emotionally moved. My mother is Irish and she cries during beer commercials. – Former U.S. General Barry McCaffrey

Ireland is a peculiar society in the sense that it was a nineteenth century society up to about 1970 and then it almost bypassed the twentieth century. – Author John McGahern

We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English. – Winston Churchill

Well, it takes all kinds of men to build a railroad. No sir, just us Irish.

• Railroad barons in “Dodge City,” Warner Bros., 1939 Ireland, sir, for good or evil, is like no other place under heaven, and no man can touch its sod or breathe its air without becoming better or worse. – George Bernard Shaw