Irish Writers: Biographies

Updated February 21, 2017 | Factmonster Staff Updated by an Factmonster Editor on February 21, 2017

Notable Irish Writers

A-F | G-O | S-Y

To be an artist is to fail, as no other dare fail, that failure is his world and the shrink from desertion, art and craft, good housekeeping, living.
—Samuel Beckett
from "Three Dialogues"

Read Irish quotes and Irish proverbs.

A-F | G-O | S-Y

There are the mud-flowers of dialect And the immortelles of perfect pitch And that moment when the bird sings very close To the music of what happens. —Seamus Heaney from "Song"


The Irish, condemned to express themselves in a language not their own, have stamped on it the mark of their own genius and compete for glory with the civilized nations. This is then called English literature. —James Joyce from a speech given in Trieste, Italy

A-F | G-O | S-Y

Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.
—W. B. Yeats
from "Adam's Curse"

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Poetry for Fall