O Ireland, isn't it grand you look -- Like a bride in her rich adornin'? And with all the pent-up love of my heart I bid you the top o' the morning'! -- John LOCKE, 'The Exile's Return' For the great Gaels of Ireland Are the men that God made mad. For all their wars are merry, And all their songs are sad. -- G. K. CHESTERTON God made the grass, the air and the rain; and the grass, the air and the rain made the Irish; and the Irish turned the grass; the air and the rain back into God. -- Sean O'FAOLAIN O Ireland my first and only love Where Christ and Caesar are hand in glove. -- James JOYCE Your wits can't thicken in that soft moist air, on those white springy roads, in those misty rushes and brown bogs, on those hillsides of granite rocks and magenta heather. You've no such colours in the sky, no such lure in the distance, no such sadness in the evenings. Oh the dreaming! the dreaming! the torturing, heart scalding, never satisfying dreaming, dreaming, dreaming. -- George Bernard SHAW, "John Bull's Other Island." The land of faery, Where nobody gets old and godly and grave, Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise, Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue. -- W. B. YEATS, "The Land of Heart's Desire." Ah, Ireland ... that damnable, delightful country, where everything that is right is the opposite of what it ought to be. -- Benjamin DISRAELI, Earl of Beaconsfield I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree ... And live alone in the bee-loud glade. I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart's core. - William Butler YEATS, "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" The graceful Georgian streets and squares, a series of steel engravings under a wet sky. -- Shana ALEXANDER, "Dublin Is My Sure Thing" My one claim to originality among Irishmen is that I have never made a speech. -- George MOORE, Irish author There is no language like the Irish for soothing and quieting. -- John SYNGE Everywhere in Irish prose there twinkles and peers the merry eye and laugh of a people who had little to laugh about in real life. -- Diarmuid RUSSELL The English language brings out the best in the Irish. They court it like a beautiful woman. They make it bray with donkey laughter. They hurl it at the sky like a paint pot full of rainbows, and then make it chant a dirge for man's fate and man's follies that is as mournful as misty spring rain crying over the fallow earth. -- T. E. KALEM Oh, all the money I e'er had, I spent it in good company, And all the harm I've ever done, Alas it was to none but me. And all I've done for want of wit To mem'ry now I can't recall; So fill to me the parting glass, Good night and joy be with you all. Ireland's ruins are historic emotions surrendered to time. -- Horace SUTTON The Gael is not like other men; the spade, and the lom, and the sword are not for him. But a destiny more glorious than that of Rome, more glorious than that of Britain, await him: to become the savior of idealism in modern intellectual and social life. -- Patrick PEARSE, Irish novelist Land of Heart's Desire, Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, time an endless song. -- William Butler YEATS Where there are Irish there's loving and fighting And when we stop either, it's Ireland no more! -- Rudyard KIPLING Oh Danny Boy, the pipes the pipes are calling, from glen to glen and down the mountain side. The summer's gone and all the roses falling, 'tis you 'tis you must go and I must bide. But come ye back when summer's in the meadow, or when the valley's hushed and white with snow. 'Tis there I'll be in the sunshine and shadow. Oh, Danny Boy, oh Danny Boy, I love you so. The Irish tricolor made its debut in 1848. It was based on the French tricolor; however, the colors were altogether Irish. One outside band was made green, the color that had long been used as a symbol of the Catholic majority. The other outside band, a stripe of orange, was chosen to represent the Protestant minority. And the middle band of white represented their unity. The Burren, Irish for "gray rocky place," is 50 square miles of great irregular slabs of limestone with deep cracks. Located in County Clare, this humid, eerie moonscape is a natural rock garden, where plants native to the Arctic thrive next to subtropical flora. Beneath the scarred surface are spectacular caves and streams. Folk legends associated with the burren say its holy wells can cure bad vision and its caves are home to ghostly horsemen. It is also reputed that mysterious lakes appear and disappear there, taking with them maidens who have been turned into swans. The Emerald Isle gets it name from its rolling green countryside, kept verdant by the almost daily rain. Lush landscapes are not all the rain brings; there's also the magic of a rainbow every day! Ireland is only about the size of West Virginia. Wherever you happen to stop for a pint, you'll never be farther than 70 miles from the sea, and yet this tiny island land has one of the richest histories in the Western world. Ireland is made up of four provinces. Ulster, Connacht, Leinster, and Munster, which are divided into 32 counties. Six of the nine counties in the province of Ulster make up the territory of Northern Ireland. We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English. -- Winston CHURCHILL "Unwillingness easily finds an excuse." "True greatness knows gentleness" "What's got badly, goes badly." "Pity him who makes his opinion a certainty."