"Irish people" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a beauty, and a martyr; Mr. Elmsdale a rough beast, who had no capacity of ever developing into a prince. Miss Blake was a model of sisterly affection, and if eccentric in her manner, and bewildering in the vagaries of her accent, well, most Irish people, the highest in rank not excepted, were the same. Why, there was Lord So-and-so, who stated at a public meeting that "roight and moight were not always convartible tarms"; and accepted the cheers and laughter which greeted his utterance as evidence that ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... with the rashest zeal the national records of the conquered people; hence it is that the Irish people deplore the irreparable losses of their most ancient national memorials, which their invaders have been too successful in annihilating. The same event occurred in the conquest of Mexico; and the interesting ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... problem of British statesmanship at the present moment is the persistent and pressing demand made by the Irish people through the Irish press and their representatives in Parliament for the repeal of the Union and the recognition of their right to national self-government. Incessantly, earnestly, eloquently, the question has been agitated ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... chieftains still. The attempt made by Chichester, under pressure from England, to introduce the English uniformity of religion ended in utter failure; for the Englishry of the Pale remained as Catholic as the native Irishry; and the sole result of the measure was to build up a new Irish people out of both on the common basis of religion. Much however had been done by the firm yet moderate government of the Deputy, and signs were already appearing of a disposition on the part of the people ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... particular part of Ireland. I may state, however, that I should myself prefer the candidate who is the most sincere friend of the Catholic Church, and most disposed to take a calm and careful view of the questions which most affect the interests of the Irish people— say Tenant Right, for instance, in which I think something should be done, but perhaps not so much as the more noisy promoters of it insist on. I do not, however, wish to influence my tenants more decidedly than by letting them know my general feelings ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... The right had to be obtained for a Catholic to sit in Parliament. The Catholic Association had been formed for the purpose, and O'Connell became its recognized leader, and, more than that, the recognized leader of the Irish people. Meanwhile there were constant efforts made in Parliament for the emancipation of the Catholics. Sir Robert Peel, who had begun his career as Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, had become Secretary of State for the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... relief she seemed to think none the less of Callum for wanting to marry an Irish girl. Some Irish people weren't bad, she declared. For her Uncle Walter and Aunt Eleanor were half Irish. Maybe she was some Irish herself, she generously conceded, but, at Scotty's look of incredulous dismay, she hastily concluded that she must be entirely and exclusively Scotch. ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... of him who is morally responsible in the eyes of God and man for the awful state of his unfortunate country. But those protectors of anarchy will say—"In following Mr O'Connell, we must be right; O'Connell and his party represent the feelings of the Irish people"—ay, just as much as the Terrorists of the Revolution did the sentiments and the feelings of the people of France. His is indeed a reign of terror—of moral terror, if you will—but of a terror quite as effectual, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... a union—not, of course, on Dundas's ground that a union would better enable the English Parliament to counteract the effects of the competition of Irish pauper labour, but for a reason which will sound curiously perhaps in the middle of our present agitations, that a union would deliver the Irish people from the tyranny of an oppressive aristocracy, which was the great cause of that kingdom being then divided into "two hostile nations," to use his words to Lord Carlisle, "the oppressors and the oppressed." ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... much in vogue among the Irish people in early times. Translations of two such charms may serve as examples. "A child was baptized in the river Jordan; and the water was dark and muddy, but the child was pure and beautiful." These words were repeated over the wound, a finger being placed on the site of the hemorrhage; and then: ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and Government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people. In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaim ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... peace. They offer in return for that boon to take the burden we have groaned under off our hands. If we answer that we think them insincere, we accuse these thrice accredited representatives of the Irish people of being hypocrites and crafty conspirators; and numbers in England, affected by the weapons they have used to get to their present strength, do think it; forgetful that our obtuseness to their constant ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... were Irish. His voice, very guttural and quick, with a kind of lively bitterness in it, was of a kind of Irish voice new to me at that time. I had known a good many Irish people; but they had all been vivacious and picturesque, rapid in intellectual argument, and vague about life. There was nothing vivacious, picturesque, rapid or vague about Synge. The rush-bottomed chair next to him was filled by talker ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... too, there has, in the same way, appeared an indirect practical result from this science; the sense of antipathy to the Irish people, of radical estrangement from them, has visibly abated amongst all the better part of us; the remorse for past ill-treatment of them, the wish to make amends, to do them justice, to fairly unite, if possible, in one people with them, ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... the last phase of O'Connellism, and he did not like it. In politics he never looked very far below the surface of things, and the wrongs of Ireland did not appeal to him. That Protestantism was the religion of the English pale, and of the Scottish Presbyterians in Ulster, not of the Irish people, was a fact outside his thoughts. He saw two things clearly enough. One was the strength and beauty of the religious faith by which the Cleavers and their friends lived. The other was the misery, squalor, and ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... mortal men." He was speaking to them of the impossibility of office-holders being independent of the government under which they held their offices. "Blazing stars," he said, "are much more frequently seen than such heroical virtues." As the Irish people were governed by such men he advised them strongly to choose a parliamentary representative from among themselves. He insisted on the value of their collected voice, their unanimity of effort, a consciousness of their understanding of what they wished to bring about. "Be independent" is ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... the good folks, Meaning the fairies, whom the Irish people call by this name. that browt her, it's they that will fetch her away agin 'fore the daylight. Wait ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... peasants and professors alike, by the underlying German assumption that the late Kaiser was anointed of God and hence above all ordinary human responsibility. We have heard talk, too, of the curious Irish axiom that there is a mysterious something in the nature of things, giving the Irish people an indefeasible right to govern Ireland as they please, regardless of the safety of their next-door neighbours. And we have heard many outlandish principles of the same sort from political theorists, e.g., regarding ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... taxation increased 50 per cent, while that of England only increased 18 per cent., the Irish people did not find Mr. ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... in Ireland, if what had taken place there could be called a reformation at all, had been wholly different from the movement which had almost extinguished Popery in England. The great majority of the Irish people had never ceased to adhere to the Romish forms, and the Reformation there had been simply a transfer of the property of the Romish Church to the Church of England, unaccompanied by any corresponding change of belief in the people, who had an undeniable ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... at least to give, that shows, even in my prose translation, how near that day may be, if the language that holds the soul of our West Irish people can be saved from the 'West Briton' destroyer. There are some verses in it that attain to the intensity of great poetry, though I think less by the creation of one than by the selection of many minds; the peasants who have sung ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... us! he said piously, to think of the men of those times, Stephen, Hely Hutchinson and Flood and Henry Grattan and Charles Kendal Bushe, and the noblemen we have now, leaders of the Irish people at home and abroad. Why, by God, they wouldn't be seen dead in a ten-acre field with them. No, Stephen, old chap, I'm sorry to say that they are only as I roved out one fine May morning in the merry ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... punishment, the dire sensation of fear, is about the only weapon which produces salutary results on certain individuals. They belong to the lowest of the race, but they undoubtedly do exist, and it is well to know how to deal with them. The Irish people in Paradise Row obtained from Isaac Dent what no amount of prayers and supplications would have won from him. Miss Vallence, when she arrived, took down from his lips a full and free confession of the evil part he ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... Sylvia spoke in praise of the Irish girl for her agility and politeness, but the young lady alongside, who did not like the Irish, told her that what the girl wanted was a shilling or two. Servants in Europe were always beggars, and the Irish people especially. But she wouldn't give the girl a quarter if it were her hat. What was the use of ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... important debate in Parliament followed on these resolutions. Some of the chief political leaders of the day took part in the discussion. Daniel O'Connell, the great {60} tribune of the Irish people, took up the cudgels for the French Canadians. Doubtless it seemed to him that the French Canadians, like the Irish, were victims of Anglo-Saxon tyranny and bigotry. Sir George Grey, the colleague of Gosford, Lord Stanley, a former colonial ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles
... of Charles Stewart Parnell deserves the gratitude of the Irish people. Brookings, p. 190: ...
— Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Debate Index - Second Edition • Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
... proof rested on those who would exclude forty-nine-fiftieths of the working-classes from the franchise. He also, as chancellor of the exchequer, caused great excitement by admitting the unsatisfactory condition of the Irish Church,—that is, the Church of England among the Irish people; sustained by their taxes, but ministering to only one-eighth or one-ninth of the population. These and other similar evidences of his liberal tendencies alienated his Oxford constituency, the last people ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... point to twenty-one Universities, awaking from their slumbers at the call of liberty—if little Belgium can support her four Universities, all active, and required by the wants of her people—surely it cannot be too much for the Irish people, divided as they unhappily are by distinctions of religion and bitter recollections of ancient feuds, to ask that the Protestant University of Elizabeth, and the Secular University of Victoria, shall be supplemented ...
— University Education in Ireland • Samuel Haughton
... ducks and geese were at the very door, and the women I saw wore dresses that did not come down very near the mud and big brogan shoes, and their talk was saucy and different from what I had ever heard women use before. They told me they were Irish people—the first I had ever seen. It was along here somewhere that I lost my little whip and to get another one made sad inroads into the little purse of pennies my father gave me. We traveled slowly on day after day. There was no use to hurry for we could not do it. The roads were muddy, the log ways ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... the birth-rate, and one advantage that seemed to him to exceed the original advantage would be the nationalisation of religion, the formation of an Irish Catholicism suited to the ideas and needs of the Irish people. ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... poor? I decided to base my answer to that question on personal investigation. I dressed myself as a working girl—it is to the working class that seven-eighths of the Irish people belong—and in a week in the slums of Dublin I found that lack of employment is continually driving the people to migration, low-wage ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... of the forms of the House to give it every opposition in their power. But what did the government do themselves? Why, they were trying to trample upon one of the sessional orders and to abrogate the forms of the House in order to coerce the Irish people. Lord George Bentinck said, that 'the chief minister had told them, that this was a bill to put down murder and assassination; in that case, if this bill were delayed, the blood of every man murdered in Ireland was on the head of her Majesty's ministers.' Sir George Grey followed, and ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... Irish Secretary once asked whether the Irish people blamed the Government for the weather; but it must be conceded that the mode of government made the Irish people more dependent than otherwise they would have been on climatic conditions, for this reason, that the margin between their means and a starvation ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... race, the native Irish, and the English and Scotch colonists." Belknap, in his History of New Hampshire (Boston, 1791) quotes a letter from the Rev. James MacGregor (1677-1729) to Governor Shute in which the writer says: "We are surprised to hear ourselves termed Irish people, when we so frequently ventured our all for the British Crown and liberties against the Irish papists, and gave all tests, of our loyalty, which the government of Ireland required, and are always ready to ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... The Irish people were so cordial, that the composer remained almost a year among them. For it was not till March 23, 1743, that the "Messiah" was performed in London. The King was one of the great audience who heard it. ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... to this ambitious scheme,—which William the Conqueror, and Henry I., had also entertained,—were alleged to be the civilisation of the Irish people, and the reformation of the Irish Church; both of which were represented as given over to barbaric anarchy, and the most crying abuses. And, indeed, such was the real state of civil and religious affairs in that country in the 12th century,—as ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby
... to him in his anxiety. It is evidence of the extent of Godwin's influence over Shelley that the latter withdrew his Irish publications and returned to England, having spent about six weeks on his mission to the Irish people. ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... their servility and flattery one moment, and their litigious and encroaching spirit the next: thus giving Lord Colambre the most unfavourable idea of the disposition and character of the lower class of the Irish people. Lady Isabel the while standing by, with the most amiable air of pity, with expressions of the finest moral sensibility, softening all her mother said, finding ever some excuse for the poor creatures, and ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... England and Gaul, the pirates that sailed to Ireland had only force to dash themselves on the coast, and there cling cautiously to guarded settlements. They settled as a race apart, as unable to mix with the Irish people as they were powerless to conquer them. No memory as in England of a common origin united them, no ties of a common language, no sense of common law or custom, or of a common political tradition. The strangers built the first cities, coined the first money, and introduced trade. But they were ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... correspondence, so as to meet each other; whereas many of the railway trains in the south of Ireland, under the competitive system existing between the several companies, are often run so as to miss each other. The present working of the Irish railway traffic provokes perpetual irritation amongst the Irish people, and sufficiently accounts for the frequent petitions presented to Parliament that they should be taken in hand and worked ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles |
