"...he'd tell me those fields and grounds belonged to my people once; but they belonged to strangers now, who had no right to them, that they ought to be mine...

Sane or insane, he spoke the truth. He was called a madman...I'd regard him as a victim of England's plunder, who embraced the mission of preaching the true faith to the children of his plundered race."

(Rossa's Recollections 1838 - 1898)

"I know how men get a bad name, and are called madmen, for speaking and acting in the true faith regarding Ireland's rights. I have myself been called a madman, because I was acting in a way that was not pleasing to England. The longer I live the more I come to believe that Irishmen will have to go a little mad my way, before they go the right way to get any freedom for Ireland."

(Rossa's Recollections 1838 - 1898)

"And why shouldn't an Irishman be mad; when he grows up face to face with the plunderers of his land and race, and sees them looking down upon him as if he were a mere thing of loathing and contempt! They strip him of all that belongs to him, and make him a pauper, and not only that, but they teach him to look upon the robbers as gentlemen, as beings entirety superior to him."

(Rossa's Recollections 1838 - 1898)

"the Irishman who is proud of his name and his family and his race, will rarely or never do anything to bring shame and disgrace upon himself or upon any one belonging to him."

(Rossa's Recollections 1838 - 1898)

"The priest had no other consolation to give, but the consolation of religion, and, very likely, it was through religion my father and mother learned - and tried - to lighten the load of life, by telling us that the poorer you are the nearer you are to God, and that the more your sufferings in this world the greater will be your reward in the next.

If that be the gospel of truth, and I hope it is, there are no people on earth nearer to heaven than the Irish people."

(Rossa's Recollections 1838 - 1898)

"Some of my friends may say: ' To Jericho with your genealogy; what do we care about it! We are here in America, where one man is as good as another.' That's all right, for any one who wants to have done with Ireland; all right for the man who can say... 'What is Ireland to me now? Sure I'm an American citizen!" All right for him who wants to be the Adam and Eve of his name and race , but it is otherwise for men who are no way ashamed of those who have gone before them, and who do not want to bury in the grave of American citizenship, all the duties they owe to their motherland, while it remains a land enslaved."

(Rossa's Recollections 1838 - 1898)

Any man who is proud of belonging to the old blood of Ireland, will never do anything to bring disgrace upon any one belonging him. I don't mind how poor he is; the poorer he is, the nearer he is to God; the nearer he is to sanctification through suffering, and the more marks and signs he has of the hand of the English enemy having been heavily laid upon him.

That hand has been heavily laid upon my race. I, even to-day, feel the weight of it on myself. "

(Rossa's Recollections 1838 - 1898)

"The Irish tongue and the Irish language are not the only things that suffer by the effort to turn everything Irish into English."


(Rossa's Recollections 1838 - 1898)

"All this I am saying [on genealogy] may be idle gossip, personal or family gossip, yet it may lead to something that may affect every one who is not ashamed of having an Irish father and mother, and of having every one and everything belonging to him, Irish. To those who would be ashamed of having it known who their father and mother and their family connections were, I have nothing to say, and I heed little what they say of me for having a little Irish family pride about me."

(Rossa's Recollections 1838 - 1898)

"Nine millions in 1845; four and a half millions in 1895. And those English savages rejoice over the manner in which they destroy us. They thank God we are gone, 'gone with a vengeance,' they say. What a pity we haven't the spirit to return the vengeance. But we are taught to do good to those that hate us, to bless those that curse us, and to pray for those who persecute and calumniate us. I can't do it; I won't try to do it; I won't be making a hypocrite of myself in the eyes of the Lord; I could sooner bring myself to pray for the devil first."

(Rossa's Recollections 1838 - 1898)

"While all of us talk much of fight, and glorify in song and story those who fought and fell, is it possible that something degenerate has grown into us, that always keeps us from coming to the point when the crisis is at hand!"

(Rossa's Recollections 1838 - 1898)

"Until England is made afraid, she will do nothing for Ireland, or give nothing to Irishmen."

(Rossa's Recollections 1838 - 1898)