There's more learning than is taught in books.

Irish history having been forbidden in schools, has been, to a great extent, learned from Raftery's poems by the people of Mayo, where he was born, and of Galway, where he spent his later years.

Every day in the year there comes some malice into the world, and where it comes from is no good place.

Once in my childhood I had been eager to learn Irish; I thought to get leave to take lessons from an old Scripture-reader who spent a part of his time in the parish of Killinane, teaching such scholars as he could find to read their own language in the hope that they might turn to the only book then being printed in Irish, the Bible.

We would not give up our own country - Ireland - if we were to get the whole world as an estate, and the Country of the Young along with it.

There is no sin coveting things are of no great use or profit, but would show out good and have some grandeur around them.

If the past year were offered me again, And choice of good and ill before me set Would I accept the pleasure with the pain Or dare to wish that we had never met?