The gift of gab: Happy St. Patrick’s Day

Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy. — William Butler Yeats

Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past. — James Joyce

Irish? It is a state of mind as well as an actual country. It is … having quite a different philosophy about pleasure, about punishment, about life, and about death. — Edna O’Brien

Laughter is brightest in the place where the food is. —  Irish Proverb

At home in Ireland, there’s a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure. — Seamus Heaney

Every trick is an old one, but with a change of players, a change of dress, it comes out as new as before. — Lady Gregory

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

When Irish eyes are smiling, they’re usually up to something. — Irish saying

The past beats inside me like a second heart. —  John Banville

To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart. — Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Memory is not pure. Memories told are not pure memories; memories told are stories. The storyteller will change them. — Alice McDermott

Put a thief among honest men, and they will eventually relieve him of his watch. — Flann O’Brien

The world’s a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed. — Sean O’Casey

May you be in heaven a full half hour before the devil knows you’re dead. — Irish Prayer

Irish amnesia: You forget everything but the grudge. — Irish Saying

God made food, the devil the cooks. — James Joyce

We possess ideas, but we are possessed by feelings. They lie too deep for understanding, astir with their own secret life and carrying us with them. — Thomas Flanagan

I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world’s eyes
As though they’d wrought it.
Song, let them take it,
For there’s more enterprise
In walking naked. — William Butler Yeats

The majority of the members of the Irish parliament are professional politicians, in the sense that otherwise they would not be given jobs minding mice at crossroads. — Myles na Gopaleen

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

I have no bone to pick with graveyards. — Samuel Beckett

God knows, if eloquence could free or save a people, we ought to be the freest and safest people on the face of the globe. — Michael Doherty