Limerick Quotes

• Most women loathe limericks, for the same reason that calves hate cookbooks.

  Gershon Legman

  Hate, Women, Reason

  8 Copy quote

• Since this war began our sympathy has gone out to all the suffering people who have been dragged into it. Further hundreds of millions have become involved since I spoke at Limerick fortnight ago.

  Eamon de Valera

  Sympathy, War, People

  26 Copy quote

• I think the first time I really heard poetry was in the schoolyard. Just the little limericks that kids say when they're jumping rope and playing games. I think that's the first time I heard rhyming words - I don't know if I'd call that the definitive poetry, but that's when I heard rhyming words said and not necessarily sung.

  Jill Scott

  Kids, Thinking, Playing Games

  7 Copy quote

• Limericks don't come from Limerick. But it comes from that between the verses when they used to have those competitions that they would put in the refrain, "follow me up, follow me up, follow me up to Limerick Town."

  Malachy McCourt

  Competition, Towns, Follow Me

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Ireland is not at all a simple place, and in many ways it is spare and sad. It has no wealth, no power, no stability, no influence, no fashion, no size. Its only real arts are song and drama and poem. But Limerick alone has two thousand ruined castles and surely that many practicing poets.

  Shana Alexander

  Fashion, Song, Art

  Shana Alexander (1970). “The feminine eye”, McCall Pub. Co

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• Buddy Hackett [was] talking - this is Hackett, not me - about the Virgin Mary, a limerick sort of thing, and all these children and families ... the look of absolute horror. He's going on and on and on, and finally he stops. It's just total horror, and the camera's still rolling. You can hear it, sort of a grinding noise. And the director says, "Anything else, Bud?"

  Bill Murray

  Children, Talking, Say Anything

  Source: www.esquire.com

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• There were a few people who got jobs in Limerick, a big barrel on wheels, and it was a barrel that went back and forth, and a shovel and a broom. So, they went around shoveling the horseshit into this barrel. So, you got that job when you were around 15, and then you got to retire at the age of 65, with a pension. A small pension. So that would be 50 years of shoveling horseshit. And I was advised very seriously that I should get that job.

  Malachy McCourt

  Jobs, Years, People

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Pat Fox out to the forty(yard line) and grabs the sliothar(ball), I bought a dog from his father last week. Fox turns and sprints for goal, the dog ran a great race last Tuesday in Limerick. Fox to the 21 fires a shot, it goes to the left and wide......and the dog lost as well.

  Micheal O Muircheartaigh

  Dog, Father, Race

  7 Copy quote

• H. L Mencken's Dictionary of the American Language supplies a long list of slang terms for being drunk, but the Irish are no slouches, either. They're spannered, rat-arsed, cabbaged, and hammered; ruined, legless, scorched, and blottoed; or simply trolleyed or sloshed. In Kerry, you're said to be flamin'; in Waterford, you're in the horrors; and in Cavan, you've gone baloobas, a tough one to wrap your tongue around if you ARE baloobas. In Donegal, you're steamin', while the afflicted in Limerick are out of their tree.

  Bill Barich

  Long, Drunk, Tree

  4 Copy quote

• In the early nineties, I was a cub reporter on a city newspaper in Limerick, and assigned to the courthouse there. One day, an old detective sergeant came and whispered to me in the press pit. He pointed out a young offender, a teenager who was up for stealing a car or something relatively minor, and said, 'See this kid? He'll kill.'

  Kevin Barry

  Teenager, Kids, Cities

  4 Copy quote

• A dozen more questions occurred to me. Not to mention twenty-two possible solutions to each one, sixteen resulting hypotheses and counter-theorems, eight abstract speculations, a quadrilateral equation, two axioms, and a limerick. That's raw intelligence for you.

  Jonathan Stroud

  Eight, Two, Twenties

  Jonathan Stroud (2005). “Bartimaeus Trilogy, Book Three: Ptolemy's Gate”, Disney-Hyperion

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• At one o’clock, the ever-logical Right-Eye Grand Steward woke up to discover that during his sleep his left-eyed counterpart had executed three of his advisors for treason, ordered the creation of a new carp pool and banned limericks. Worse still, no progress had been made in tracking down the Kleptomancer, and of the two people believed to be his accomplices, both had been released from prison and one had been appointed food taster. Right-Eye was not amused. He had known for centuries that he could trust nobody but himself. Now he was seriously starting to wonder about himself.

  Frances Hardinge

  Sleep, Eye, Two

  Frances Hardinge (2012). “A Face Like Glass”, p.109, Pan Macmillan

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• Mia Maz glanced aside in concern at his muffled snort. "Are you all right?" "Yes. Sorry," he whispered. "I'm just having an attack of limericks." Her eyes widened, and she bit her lip; only her deepening dimple betrayed her. "Shhh," she said, with feeling.

  Lois McMaster Bujold

  Sorry, Eye, Feelings

  33 Copy quote