101 quotes found
"I do not know what age I am, I am no mortal age; I know nothing of women, Nothing of cities, I cannot die Unless I walk outside these whitethorn hedges."
"Mullahinsa, Drummeril, Black Shanco- Wherever I turn I see In the stony grey soil of Monaghan Dead loves that were born for me."
"I loved too much and by such and such is happiness thrown away."
"I inclined To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind. He said: I made the Iliad from such A local row. Gods make their own importance."
"O commemorate me where there is water, Canal water, preferably, so stilly Greeny at the heart of summer. Brother Commemorate me thus beautifully Where by a lock niagarously roars The falls for those who sit in the tremendous silence Of mid-July."
"The headlands and the hedges were so fresh and wonderful, so gay with the dawn of the world. Tarry never tired looking at these ordinary things as he tired of the Mass and of religion. In a dim way he felt that he was not a Christian. In the god of Poetry he found a God more important to him than Christ. His god had never accepted Christ."
"They were both more than twenty-seven in those enthusiastic years of nineteen hundred and thirty-five, yet neither had as much as ever kissed a girl. Not that kissing was much in favour in that district. Reading about lovers kissing, Tarry often reflected on the fact that he had never seen anyone kissing anyone, except poor old Peter Toole whom he once saw kissing a corpse in a wakehouse in the hope of getting a couple of glasses of whiskey."
"Outside the door a group of men stood whispering while the less solemn parts of the Mass were being said. These men stared about them at the rolling country of little hills and commented on the crops, the weather, the tombstones or whatever came into their dreaming minds. 'Very weedy piece of spuds, them of Mick Finnegan's.' 'He doesn't put on the dung, Larry: the man that doesn't drive on the dung won't take out a crop.' A pause, 'Nothing like the dung.'"
"With women in general he was truthful and sincere and would talk philosophy or Canon Law (Canon Law fascinated him, though what he knew of the subject was utter nonsense) to them on the slightest provocation. Women cannot understand honesty in a man."
"In country places a single word is inflected to mean a hundred things, so that only a recording of the sounds gives an idea of the speech of these people."
"'I was talking to one of the McArdles there and I was telling him that he ought to be getting a women. "Huh," says he, "what would I be doing with a woman? I have me pint and me fag," says he, "and I'm not going to bring in a woman.'""
"'Begod there's a powerful piece of turnips'"
"'I always say to these here, marry the first man that asks you. There's only three classes of men a woman should never marry - a delicate man, a drunken man, and a lazy man. I'm not so sure that the lazy man isn't the worst.'"
"Clifford and his colleagues could have a field day. I don't give Cork a prayer against Kerry."
"Original link / Secondary coverage"
"Meath, like last year, won't be beaten by 16 points."
"Puke football."
"RTÉ Television"
"Shi'ite football."
"Donegal Democrat"
"There are people who go to the Hague for war crimes – I tell you this, some of the coaches nowadays should be up for crimes against Gaelic football."
"The Irish Times"
"If I went to America and I went in to a big room and there was a thousand super models inside in that room, naked, all trying to seduce me, and if there was a pint of beer at the end of the room, I would go for the pint of beer. That's trust."
"And I was very annoyed to hear Pat Spillane going on about that again recently, saying that about this Sligo team, that we were waving to the crowd. Sure Pat Spillane was a great footballer, but he can be very insulting as well, to a lot of counties."
"Barnes Murphy, following Sligo's 2007 Connacht Senior Football Championship win, on accusations (encouraged by Spillane) that Sligo were complacent in allowing the Kerry team featuring Spillane easily defeat them in the 1975 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship semi-final."
"The woman I'm going to have to marry is going to have to be very, very good to top this day off for me."
"The extra hour in bed this morning just was sexual!"
"For McHugh, think Messi."
"I had to get out of a hole, wash my hands and sign the form."
"On signing for Sligo Rovers in 1979."
"There was Patsy McGowan coming towards me, dapper dressed as always and a form in his hand."
"On the then Sligo Rovers manager."
"I was captain and we lost by two points to Monaghan. People said we lost it because we had a soccer midfield: myself and Denis Bonner, Packie's twin.""
"On playing Gaelic football for Donegal in the 1981 Ulster final."
"I played until I was 33 or 34 with one and a half legs."
"I managed to hold onto some performance with the knee in soccer having had two or three cruciates, whereas in Gaelic football it was a more difficult thing to do."
"Odhrán Mac Niallais didn't lick his talent off the table."
"In 2020, on the Donegal Gaelic footballer."
"[Charlie's] an awful man for answering his phone. I couldn't get in contact with him to get a challenge game... He [David Power] gave me the number, Charlie still didn't answer! If you know Charlie, he wouldn't be bothered. He'd just say I'm a low level guy - he only answers to a few of the big people, presidents of the US and that sort of thing."
"And we could poke fun at them about by-passing the toll gates and 10 shilling notes and driving up on Ferguson tractors and supplying them with maps of Dublin and Nelson's Pillar not being there anymore."
"If they waited a couple of hours they could have commemorated two massacres in Croke Park."
"They always feel a bit isolated up there in the north-west."
"This union, which is dominated by some socialist philosophy, is not fit for purpose."
"I often got a belt from my mother with a wet dish cloth for kicking a ball through a window."
"The Miraculous Medal around his neck is obviously not working all the time anyway."
"I see the Taoiseach keeping a very close eye on the Donegal team, obviously looking for prospective candidates for Donegal in the next election."
"They're like the grim reaper when anybody comes [to Croke Park] they just put them away with ruthless efficiency."
"There is no hope for anybody else. You might as well give up the ghost now."
"Did you see last week where he referred to 'the Greek poet Horace', assisting those of us who are too old by translating the Latin quotation into English? ... Horace a Roman citizen, wrote in Latin. Homer was the Greek poet. Good luck to Meath at the weekend."
"I think Colm might need to go to Specsavers, because any big game I've seen, Michael does not go hiding, that's for sure. He has been brilliant, he is a leader on and off the pitch and he goes looking for work anywhere on that pitch."
"It is a fact widely known that Kieran McGeeney's teams do not perform in championship. This tradition continued at Breffni Park yesterday, with Donegal playing a virtually perfect game."
"For the second week in a row, Kieran Donaghy was better dressed in the studio than Jimmy McGuinness and Peter Canavan wasn't. Last weekend, Kieran gave a detailed analysis of a sending off he hadn't seen."
"American presidents come and go. Dublin endure. Their annual Leinster Championship run has become the easiest campaign in Irish life after the Healy-Raes', with more discipline."
"Boris Johnson said this week that he wants to unleash 'The Great British haircut'. Boris, who looks like what Owen Mulligan will in 10 years' time, likes to put 'Great British' or 'Great Britain' before his public pronouncements... Perhaps when Owen Mulligan was running amok against Dublin in the mid-noughties, selling them what Sean Cavanagh would describe as 'The Great UK dummy', a young Boris was watching, marched straight to the barber afterwards and demanded the full Mulligan."
"I asked one board member this week how much [Derry manager] Rory Gallagher is being paid. He said 'I don't ask, I don't want to know'. 'How is he being paid?' 'I don't know. As I said, I don't ask'. As part of the package, Rory is driving a sponsored 5 series BMW from JKC Motors. A Fermanagh man, or is it Cavan, or Antrim, I cannot put my finger on it, he was appointed by the previous board on the basis that he was a 'top rank professional manager'."
"In Derry, the board is currently in serious discussions about whether to enter a senior team into next year's championship... if Derry had not fielded a team in league or championship over the last five years, our absence would have been as memorable as Kilkenny's footballers... In a small dual county, in a vain bid to keep up with the Joneses, we have been spending over £45,000 a month on our senior teams... What has all this expenditure bought us? To Division 4. And now, Division 3 mid-table mediocrity."
"The one real anomaly in the League is The Black Death... They have continued to play the most horrible, defensive football the game has ever seen, oblivious to the trend towards attack based, non fouling football."
"Great second half by Cavan. Always had a soft spot for the county ever since Pat Faulkner kicked me up in the air & Joe Dillon caught me over his head in the 1987 Ulster club semi final v Kingscourt."
"Boys talking through their arses on TSG. It was a superb goal. The hip nudge to put Walsh off balance. The catch. The lightning fast, deft finish. The perfect timing."
"Media coverage of the tweet"
"Barry McGowan. Now he was an example of a really great footballer who was totally unheralded. For me, he was as good as Tony Scullion. He was in that mould."
"Och, he knows what I think of him – I've said it before."
"The great Barry, the great unheralded maestro of Donegal football..."
"The world has increasingly become like the Rose of Tralee... We're either interested in the truth and in the facts of things or we're in Rose of Tralee world where no-one says anything and where, for example, RTÉ apologise because you and I took an entirely fair, but robust view of Barry McGuigan. I mean, apologising? And, of course, everybody knows the apology is false as well. Everybody knows, 'Well that's a false apology, obviously McGuigan has rung up to complain about this, the wee shite that he is'."
"He's so big, he has an arse like a bag of cement. You can't get near him when the ball comes in, yet he has the most delicate skills."
"Tommy Walsh is a one-trick pony – if he gets the ball 40 yards from goal and you stay close to him he'll barge past you and head for goal, but if you stand off him and wait for him to come onto his left then he won't do any damage... Walsh doesn't have the speed of thought or foot to deal with proper, logical defending."
"And where in the country would you get anyone like Anthony Lynch, a warrior and a Gaeilgeoir? If my daughter said she was going to marry him I'd go down on my knees and thank the Lord. No dowry would be too large for the Lynch family."
"'What do people see in Canty?' a Kerry man texted me at half-time [of the 2011 Munster final]. 'I don't know' was my response. In fairness, Kerry people are very harsh judges of a footballer. Someone like Graham, whose strengths are his physique, athleticism and never-say-die attitude, underwhelms them. They have that in Kerry, but on top of that they have the skills. Graham does not."
"Yes, I visibly propelled Michael Murphy into the air to catch that ball. My ability to deliver an All-Ireland to the highest bidder! I am a powerful man and people should be afraid."
"I got a warning... It said at 11 minutes past three on the day of the drawn All-Ireland Final you said to Pat Spillane, and it was put into quotes, 'Would you stop patting my arm?' 'This was grossly unprofessional and rude and cannot be tolerated'. I kid you not. I was also told that Joanne Cantwell had lost confidence in my abilities as an analyst."
"Brolly could cause a riot in a convent."
"Joe Brolly is a person in pain."
"I used to think you were an awful shite."
"Very disappointing that Sligo have pulled out of the championship... Longford and Leitrim have had issues... the integrity of the competition is being questioned now. Why is it all weaker counties that seem to be in bother with this, does it suit them?"
"Tomás Ó Sé is a pundit, he is not appointed or elected by anybody to question anybody... He is just promoting his own agenda, to promote himself as a pundit. That's what all this is about. What Tomás Ó Sé is at is unforgivable and I think he should consider his position as a pundit when he is prepared to condemn lesser people and ask 'does it suit us'."
"Jesus you put the phone down for an hour and watch I'm a celebrity get me out of here."
"For the second week in a row, Kieran Donaghy was better dressed in the studio than Jimmy McGuinness and Peter Canavan wasn't."
"I was on the Tyrone senior panel for 13 years trying to get my hands on the Sam Maguire. Mickey Harte arrives on the scene and I leave three years later with two All-Irelands."
""[A] great man for the Mars bars and a packet of Smarties."
"The kid plays with the relaxed air of a scruffy schoolboy messing around with his pals waiting for the bus. One could imagine him playing the entire game with a fag hanging out of the corner of his mouth. Yesterday, he quarter-backed Donegal's victory with a simply awesome display, delivering the ball to all parts of the field as if by remote control, leaving Armagh players scampering around like dogs chasing aeroplanes."
"The wife is snoring in the background so apologies for that."
""Now we know the secret of reaching an All-Ireland final. Eat eight meals a day," joked Michael Lyster. Many months ago, Donegal manager Jim McGuinness saw midfielder Rory Kavanagh as one of his key men, but felt he was too light. In order to bulk up, Jim asked him to eat eight meals a day."
"Brian was on the phone constantly, even ringing the hotel to make sure I was doing a spot of training."
"From the age of eight or nine my mother had me washing dishes on a biscuit tin at the Holyrood."
"That's the end of my free dinners in Cavan!"
"Colm O'Rourke as co-commentator during the first half of the 1992 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final, when McHugh's scapular broke through his jersey and flapped loosely in the breeze (erroneously referred to by O'Rourke as "his Miraculous Medal")."
"Paddy dashed back towards his goal like a woman who smells a cake burning. The ball won the race and it curled inside the near post as Paddy crashed into the outside of the net and lay against it like a fireman who had returned to find his station ablaze."
"They have their opponents psychologically smashed."
"Then came the opening quarter and there were Smiths and Bradys flying around the place and going full Hezbollah on the idea that they hadn't a hope."
"I bet you the Dubs are shiteing themselves now. #LouthforUlster #Hartesarmy"
"The least that you expect from an analyst is that they have an opinion. Neither Duignan or Brennan offered this on The Sunday Game."