When the Irishman is found outside of Ireland in another environment, he very often becomes a respected man. The economic and inte...llectual conditions that prevail in his own country do not permit the development of individuality.... No one who has any self-respect stays in Ireland, but flees afar as though from a country that has undergone the visitation of an angered Jove.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If I did not know that I am a genuine Dane, I could almost be tempted to explain my self-contradictions by supposing that I am an ...Irishman. For the Irish do not have the heart to immerse their children totally when they have them baptized; they want to keep a little paganism in reserve; generally the child is totally immersed under water but with the right arm free, so that he will be able to wield a sword with it, embrace the girls.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Frustrate a Frenchman, he will drink himself to death; an Irishman, he will die of angry hypertension; a Dane, he will shoot himse...lf; an American, he will get drunk, shoot you, then establish a million dollar aid program for your relatives. Then he will die of an ulcer.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No doubt Jews are most obnoxious creatures. Any competent historian or psychoanalyst can bring a mass of incontrovertible evidence... to prove that it would have been better for the world if the Jews had never existed. But I, as an Irishman, can, with patriotic relish, demonstrate the same of the English. Also of the Irish.... We all live in glass houses. Is it wise to throw stones at the Jews? Is it wise to throw stones at all?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I heard some of our party discussing the possibility of their driving these troops off the field with their umbrellas. I thought t...hat the Yankee, though undisciplined, had this advantage at least, that he especially is a man who, everywhere and under all circumstances, is fully resolved to better his condition essentially, and therefore he could afford to be beaten at first; while the virtue of the Irishman, and to a great extent the Englishman, consists in merely maintaining his ground or condition.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The doctors are all agreed that I am suffering for want of society. Was never a case like it. First, I did not know that I was suf...fering at all. Secondly, as an Irishman might say, I had thought it was indigestion of the society I got.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. Did you ever think what those sleepers are that underlie the railroad? Each one ...is a man, an Irishman, or a Yankee man. The rails are laid on them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them. They are sound sleepers, I assure you. And every few years a new lot is laid down and run over; so that, if some have the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon. And when they run over a man that is walking in his sleep, a supernumerary sleeper in the wrong position, and wake him up, they suddenly stop the cars, and make a hue and cry about it, as if this were an exception. I am glad to know that it takes a gang of men for every five miles to keep the sleepers down and level in their beds as it is, for this is a sign that they may sometime get up again.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »