This week we offer a collection of evergreen Irish blessings, proverbs, and toasts in honor of St Patrick’s Day.

 

May you have the hindsight to know where you’ve been, the foresight to know where you’re going, and the insight to know when you’re going too far.

He who loses money, loses much. He who loses a friend, loses more. He who loses faith, loses all.

May you have warm words on a cold evening, a full moon on a dark night, and the road downhill all the way to your door.

May you live as long as you want, and never want as long as you live.

If you buy what you don’t need you might have to sell what you do.

May you die in bed at ninety-five years, shot by a jealous husband (or wife).

May the hinges of our friendship never grow rusty.

Beautiful young people are acts of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.

When we drink, we get drunk. When we get drunk, we fall asleep. When we fall asleep, we commit no sin. When we commit no sin, we go to heaven. So, let’s all get drunk, and go to heaven!

Good as drink is, it ends in thirst.

Here’s to our wives and girlfriends: May they never meet!

May those who love us love us. And those that don’t love us, may God turn their hearts, and if He doesn’t turn their hearts may He turn their ankles, so we’ll know them by their limping.

Who gossips with you will gossip of you.

It is often a person’s mouth broke his nose.

Drink is the curse of the land. It makes you fight with your neighbor. It makes you shoot at your landlord. And it makes you miss him.

There’s nothing so bad that it couldn’t be worse.

When the sky falls we’ll all catch larks.

Show the fatted calf but not the thing that fattened him.

A scholar’s ink lasts longer than a martyr’s blood.

What butter and whiskey will not cure there’s no cure for.

It’s easy to halve the potato where there’s love.