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Saint Patrick's Day Quotes

No Irish collection sits under this page. It comes from two others, luck and friendship, which is about as close as a mechanical match can get to a day of toasts. The luck page leans on Seneca, Livy and Shakespeare, and on Horace’s complaint about Fortune, so expect fortune in the Roman sense rather than the four-leaf kind.

Two of its entries, from Torquato Tasso, are flagged misattributed. If you want an Irish writer, use the search box. Wilde and Shaw are both on the site.

Random quote on Saint Patrick's Day

Most quoted on saint patrick's day:

Friend. Songwriter. The Great Harmonizer of Humanity. Dolly. Dolly. Dolly. Forever Dolly.

Lily Tomlin

Why do we travel to remote locations? To prove our adventurous spirit or to tell stories about incredible things? We do it to be alone amongst friends and to find ourselves in a land without man.

George Mallory The Wildest Dream: The Biography of George Mallory (2001)

What is there to say? They are my friends. I would do it again, over and over — for I hate cruelty and intolerance.

Oskar Schindler

Of both our fortunes good and bad we find
Prosperity more searching of the mind:
Felicity flies o'er the wall and fence,
While misery keeps in with patience.

Robert Herrick Hesperides (1648)

To all my friends without distinction I am ready to display my opulence: come one, come all; and whosoever likes to take a share is welcome to the wealth that lies within my soul.

Antisthenes

And be prepared. Luck is truly where preparation meets opportunity.

Randy Pausch The Last Lecture (2007)

Contrary to general belief, I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first.

Peter Ustinov Dear Me (1977)

Now the quietude of earth
Nestles deep my heart within;
Friendships new and strange have birth
Since I left the city's din.

George William Russell The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Friendship's an empty name, made to deceive
Those whose good nature tempts them to believe:
There's no such thing on earth; the best that we
Can hope for here is faint neutrality.

Sir Samuel Tuke, 1st Baronet The Adventures of Five Hours (1663)

I've never felt any sense of competition with anybody, and we're all friends. We're all good friends.

Jim Henson Interview with Judy Harris (1982)

God protect me from my friends, I can protect myself from my enemies. [Variation: Defend me from my friends; I can take care of my enemies myself].

Claude Louis Hector de Villars

The amiable is a duty most certainly, but must not be exercised at the expense of any of the virtues. He who seeks to do the amiable always, can only be successful at the frequent expense of his manhood.

William Gilmore Simms

Bruce Lee’s first filmed fight scene of his career, was fighting me as Robin on Batman. Because we were friends, we sparred together

Burt Ward

when a man had deserved his good luck, it was the part of his neighbours to wish him joy.

George Eliot Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861)

We won't sacrifice our ties with any of our allies or good friends over business relations with another country. We firmly believe no country in the world can restrict our sovereign decision to make friends with another country.

Mario Abdo Benítez Mario Abdo Benítez (2019)

I've had marvelous and incredible luck, and devoted parents, sisters, friends, and teachers. What more can one ask? These things contribute enormously. Probably the major part of one's success is due to these factors.

Yehudi Menuhin

We are friends with almost every country on the planet. We are not enemies with anybody. We respect the views of those we do not agree with, even as we continue to defend ours as a responsibility passed down from our forefathers.

Samia Suluhu Hassan Samia Suluhu Hassan (2021)

It was astonishing how quickly friendship could turn to enmity, she thought, like a compass needle swinging from one pole to the other.
They’d been excellent friends. They’d make excellent enemies as well.

Alastair Reynolds Pushing Ice (2005)

As a warrior his reputation was well established and well deserved, not the least important of his qualifications being that mysterious attribute known as luck, an attribute inspiring alike to the possessor and to those serving under him.

Louis Francis Salzman Edward I (1968)

Things happen. We had not wanted them to happen. They had arisen out of the ashes of chance.

Colum McCann Let the Great World Spin (2009)

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