Douglas Hyde Quotes (16 Quotes)

For the first time in Ireland within my recollection, Catholic and Protestant, Unionist and Nationalist, landlord and tenant, priest and parson, all work hand in hand in the interest of Ireland's life and intellectuality.

The Gaelic League is founded not upon hatred of England, but upon love of Ireland. Hatred is a negative passion it is powerful - a very powerful destroyer but it is useless for building up. Love, on the other hand, is like faith it can move mountains, and

It is a most disgraceful shame the way in which Irishmen are brought up. They are ashamed of their language, institutions, and of everything Irish.

I cannot conceive a more acute pain in the power of sentiment to inflict than that which I should feel if, after a life passed in England or the colonies or India, I were to come back to my native mountains and find that the indifference or the actual discouragement of our leaders had succeeded in destroying the language of my childhood.

In order to de-Anglicize ourselves, we must at once arrest the decay of the language. We must teach ourselves not to be ashamed of ourselves.

As our language wanes and dies, the golden legends of the far-off centuries fade and pass away. No one sees their influence upon culture; no one sees their educational power.

I - and there are hundreds of thousands of Irishmen who felt on this subject as I do - have always liked my Celtic countrymen and disliked the English nation; it is a national trait of character, and I cannot help it.

How many Irishmen are there who would purchase material prosperity at such a price It is exactly such a question as this and the answer to it that shows the difference between the English and Irish race. Nine Englishmen out of ten would jump to make the exchange, and I firmly believe that nine Irishmen out of ten would indignantly refuse it.

Every crag and gnarled tree and lonely valley has its own strange and graceful legend attached to it.

We must put pressure upon our politicians not to snuff out by their tacit discouragement merely because they do not happen to understand it.

Now if we allow our living language to die out, it is almost a certainty that we condemn our literary records to remain in obscurity.

I do not share the wish to see my language dead and decently buried.

What we want in Ireland is a National University which will bring students together and educate them upon national lines.

We are told that the keeping alive a language spoken by so small a number of the community is a barrier to progress.

Englishmen have very noble and excellent qualities which I should like to see imitated here, but I should not like to imitate them in everything. I like our own habits and character better, they are more consonant to my nature I like our own turn of thought, our own characteristics, and above all I like our own language.

What I advocate brings with it no substantial or material advantage at all. It will neither make money nor help to make money.