Ireland By Frank Delaney Quotes

Every pain is a lesson.

Do you know what the difference is between Friendship and Love? Friendship is the photograph, Love is the oil painting.

Start with the difficult and when it gets easy, everything else is easier.

When I come out on the road of a morning, when I have had a night's sleep and perhaps a breakfast, and the sun lights a hill on the distance, a hill I know I shall walk across an hour or two thence, and it is green and silken to my eye, and the clouds have begun their slow, fat rolling journey across the sky, no land in the world can inspire such love in a common man.

The difference between a friend and an enemy is friendliness.

To have come from Ireland no matter how long ago is to be of Ireland in some part forever.

I believe the world of the spirit is in general greatly neglected and not at all served by the practice of faith as we know it, because religion isn't individual enough.

What I told you tonight - it isn't my story alone. It belongs to every Irish person living and dead. And every Irish person living and dead belongs to it. And to all the story of Ireland; blood and bones, legends, guns and dreams, Catholics, Protestants, England, horses and poets and lovers.

The point about words is—the better you use them, the stronger is the thought that wears them.

Marriage is the gold standard of all relationships. It's the currency by which everything is valued.

We do well to remember dolphins. If a dolphin ails, then others come alongside and nudge him gently through the waters; because a dolphin must keep moving in order to keep breathing. We all have need of our dolphins alongside us from time to time.

The wises men tell us that everything, sooner or later, changes. And all change commences with a specific moment. We say to ourselves, "I wont do this again, I must become different." And we succeed -- eventually.

Should; shouldn't; ought; oughtn't—the enemies of contentment.

Stories are where you go to look for the truth of your own life.

It's very healing,' he said, 'to tell yourself your own story as though you were reciting a myth.

Marriage is very important. Marrying a girl is the most important thing a man can do. Never mind business or politics or sport or any of that, there's nothing so vital to the world as a man marrying a woman. That's where we get our children from, that's how the human race goes forward. And if it's too late for children, there's the companionship of a safe and trusted person.

Beneath its broad surface, storytelling should always work hard to say more than it seems to.

But can you make someone feel the world all around loves them? Can you make them feel the rain is for cooling them, the wind is for drying them, the sun is for warming them?

...fair is a body pigment, that's all it is.

The one joy that has kept me going through life has been the fact that stories unite us. To see you as you listen to me now, as you have always listened to me, is to know this: what I can believe, you can believe. And the way we all see our story-not just as Irish people but as flesh and blood individuals and not the way people tell us to see it-that's what we own, no matter who we are and where we come from.

Any attempt to ease guilt by justification is false. That the crimes of another appease none of one's own offenses. That, if one is being truthful, the greater pain is that of the offender. I know now that I would much rather be a victim of violence than a perpetrator

Draped across an armchair lay his famous long black coat, empty now, and hollow with missing him.

James left us, taking his great, informed soul with him.

Getting up, going to bed, preparing food, eating food--we futile creatures must struggle all the time. Nothing that we need comes to us; we must reach for everything.

Never underestimate their intelligence, always underestimate their knowledge.

we must all share in each other’s visions if the world is to become civilized.

Stick a lighted candle up your backside to give yourself that inner glow.

Guns discommode me. Their facility alarms me. Point and kill. Ruin someone's life. Remove at a finger pull deeply loved people, as important in their spheres as the sun in the sky. The very weight of a gun disturbs me-an insolent object, insisting on its own importance.

...habit of speaking in paragraphs.

definition of remorse: a mourning that is out of control and never ends, that can strike out of the bluest of skies, across the softest of snows.

There's always good news wrapped up in bad news.

My mother used to say, “Fun is fun till someone loses an eye.

We had so many of those meaningless banter phrases, those icebreakers... they were meaningless-but without malice of harm, and they helped awkward people get over their embarrassment at being alive.

that’s the story of how Saint Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland forever and banished the Devil to England. Some people say that explains why there has always been such trouble between England and Ireland. The Devil stirs it up.

And he had other assets; one of them -- you'll be surprised at this -- was sin...Whatever it was, Patrick said how it weighed on him. He also exploited it -- because it enabled him to meet people on an equal footing. He was able to say, "Look, I'm not above you. I have my faults, too. I've done terrible things." Just because someone had once sinned, he said, didn't mean they were bad through and through. And that was part of his work in life -- to show that people might sin and still go on to live good lives.

I suppose if you’ve always been wrapped in wool, you don’t know it’s wool.

Can you lead to dignity a man abused by his employer? Can you give hope for a new life to a woman whose infant has died? Can you guide an oppressed people to freedom and power?

Patrick had left behind some writings, and one of his most famous works was something many of us learned in school called “Saint Patrick’s Breastplate,” a kind of a cross between a hymn and a poem.

the Devil became desperate to get away. His way was blocked, so he bit a big chunk out of the mountaintop and carried it off in his mouth. Patrick, stunned at the size of the hole in the mountain, hesitated for a moment, and lost his advantage. By the time he looked up, the Devil had gone too far ahead to be caught. Patrick gave up the chase. Up ahead, at Cashel, the Devil stopped for a rest, and he dropped the stone out of his mouth. That stone became the Rock of Cashel, the most famous sight in Ireland.

I’ve just had very bad news.” “What’s the good news inside it? There’s always good news wrapped up in bad news.” “Jesus God, I don’t know.” “But there is.” “That’s ludicrously optimistic.” Lelia said, “You’ll have to use smaller words, you’re in Clare now.” Ronan

What are you like inside? Don’t you have feelings where you love everyone, and at the same time you hate everyone? Or—don’t you have times when everything goes the way you want, but nothing feels good or right? That’s what I mean,” he’d say, “about my black horse and my white horse.

Tonight, I'm certainly going to tell you a story, but 'tis a story with a difference because, unlike virtually every other tale I tell-in this case, I was there. And yet I know that although I was there, and I saw people who were real, they have since become somewhat imagined-because I now view them through my memory. That's something every human being does-but storytellers live by it.

I never met a librarian worth his or her salt who didn't perceive my passion for books. And without exception, each one would lend me a book on a subject we had been discussing. No paperwork, no formalities of any kind, no rules or regulations. My unspoken side of the bargain was to protect them, in two ways; first by keeping the book unharmed - not that easy, especially in bad weather, but when it rained, I carried the book next to my skin. I can tell you now that carrying Gulliver's Travels or Lays of Ancient Rome or Mr. Oscar Wilde's stories or Mr. William Yeat's poems next to my heart gave me a kind of sweet pleasure. The second half of the bargain often nearly broke my heart, but I always kept it - and that was to return the book safe and sound to the library that had lent it. To part company with Mr. Charles Dickens or Mr. William Makepeace Thackeray and his lovely name! - that was harder than saying good-bye to a dear flesh-and-blood companion. But I always did it - and I sent the book by registered post, no small consideration of cost given the peculiar economics of an itinerant storyteller.

I’ll tell you what was the first division of Ireland. It came from the time the people who worshipped the goddess Danu was hammered by the Milesians—d’you know about the Milesians?” “A race of mighty men taller than Roman spears,” quoted Ronan. “Hah! You’re not as green as you’re cabbage-looking. Up from Spain they came thousands of years ago, thousands. And they had spears, whereas the Danu people only had spells. And a spell is like your arse—it has its uses, but not in a fight.” “I said you came to the right house,” said Myrtle. “And when the Spanish defeated them, they made a treaty, and the Milesians took all of Ireland above the ground, and the Danu took all below the ground, where they are living still—that was the first political division of Ireland. Did you know that?” “We were taught it at school,” said Ronan. “And did you never think to question that you were taught as a historical fact that people live like sprites under the ground of Ireland?

I give people hope.

Brendan, as you know, is called “Brendan the Navigator.

Man’s love is of Man’s life a thing apart—’tis Woman’s whole existence.

The Wayfarer.

O’Mara, if you waste the gifts you have, I’ll personally scourge you. That’s a warning.” Ronan hoisted his rucksack feebly. “And if I don’t?” “I’ll say, ‘Good man.’ Now go and mend the holes in your life. And do it decently, for Christ’s sake. Don’t act like a boor. Piss out any vinegar in your bloodstream. No one meant you any harm.

Some people waste their smiles by using them too often. Not Patrick. He rarely smiled—but when he did, his face shone like the sun after rain.

There's a legend...that says all couples who are meant to marry are connected by an invisible silver cord. The matchmaking gods tie that cord around their ankles at birth, and in time the gods pull those cords tighter and tighter. Slowly, slowly, over the next twenty or thirty or forty years, they draw the couple toward each other until they meet.

it'd give your heart an armchair to sit down in,

Her name was Sorcha--the English call it Sarah--and she grew up in a family related to the king of Leinster.

I have a number of such wells in mind. In county Longford, not far from the town of Granard, a spring bubbles in some rough ground a few yards from the roadside. Climb the old wire fence where it ties into a tree, walk in a north-westerly direction, and look out for some unexpected ferns and water fronds; the big green blades will catch your eye.

He shouldn’t be telling her this. He’s using information from my life to give himself power. I loathe that.

It gives an artist's impression. Which has a kind of truth.

Is life worth living? It depends on the liver.