Top 224 Celtic Quotes & Sayings - Page 4

Freud's theory was that when a joke opens a window and all those bats and bogeymen fly out, you get a marvellous feeling of relief and elation. The trouble with Freud is that he never had to play the old Glasgow Empire on a Saturday night after Rangers and Celtic had both lost.

I didn't really adapt to Scottish football well, but I enjoyed my time there. The physical nature and the pace of the game was a big thing, and many of the teams defended really deep against Celtic so there was not so much space to run in behind. That's a big part of my game, so that was one thing as well.

The populist zeal to seek revenge on those who make a lot of money is targeted almost exclusively at corporations. I haven't heard outcries about Hollywood actors who make millions per film, even when those movies are a bust at the box office and the talent at issue has none. There's no outrage over athletes like New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez's $33 million salary or Celtic power forward Kevin Garnett's $25 million. Nor should there be. These are exceptionally talented individuals whose teams' owners think they're worth every penny.

This siren, this goat-footed bard, this half human visitor to our age the hag-ridden and enchanted woods of Celtic antiquity. One catches in his company that flavour of final purposelessness, inner responsibility, existence outside or away from our Saxon good and evil, mixed with cunning, remorselessness, love of power.

I did think there were one or two referees who had a personal thing against me. It wasn't them versus Celtic - it was them against me! I just think they wanted to take me on.

The Wild Hunt is known in all Celtic countries; it is a huntsman with a pack of hounds who is seen or heard to rush through the country. Those who see him are doomed to die. The writer heard the Wild Hunt quite distinctly one night in Wales several years ago, but has not suffered any ill effects from it as yet.

It's funny: when I was a kid, my mom would reorganize the record collection all the time. She'd have classical, she'd have Celtic, she'd have rock and roll, and then she'd have female singers. And I don't like it that female singers are their own genre.

We Irish prefer embroideries to plain cloth. To us Irish, memory is a canvas--stretched, primed, and ready for painting on. We love the "story" part of the word "history," and we love it trimmed out with color and drama, ribbons and bows. Listen to our tunes, observe a Celtic scroll: we always decorate our essence.

When I was a teenager, working towards dropping out of high school to starting to tour with bands, I'd drive around in my VW Bug every morning before school, very stoned listening over and over to Zeppelin. This song got to me because it just seemed mystical. There is something about those Celtic tunings that almost sounds Eastern. Somehow it would sweep me up into my own little trance-like state, like Sting with those shamans in the Amazon. But all I had was a bong and a Led Zeppelin cassette.

As a player I won things, had a special 10 years under Martin O'Neill [at Leicester and Celtic] and played in some great teams, beating Manchester United and getting to the last 16 of the Champions League. As a manager, I don't know if I will top this; I hope I do, because I am still young and am still learning. But this is up there with anything I have achieved, not just in my football career but in my life.

Socialism and Communism don't work, but neither does straightforward capitalism. We've got to get a new way of thinking and working. We blew it so there was good and bad about the celtic tiger. But we're tiny. There's four million in the country, do you know what I mean? We're tiny. Four million in a country, how many is in New York? Seven? Ten? But we're strong, so hopefully we pull through.

Celtic are the club I supported as a boy, and I loved every moment I was there. For me to leave there, I knew I was going to have to not just come to a club, but I had to come to a special club that was going to allow me to connect with the players and hopefully the supporters, too.

Treasured Pagan Deities were misrepresented and distorted by the Christians for political and religious gain. Dressing their own Satan, who has remained one of the most opressive symbols of evil in our time, in the horned antlers of Cernunnos, a revered Celtic God, was one of the more recognizable ways Christians robbed Pagans of their way of life.

Halloween is an ancient druidic holiday, one the Celtic peoples have celebrated for millennia. It is the crack between the last golden rays of summer and the dark of winter; the delicately balanced tweak of the year before it is given over entirely to the dark; a time for the souls of the departed to squint, to peek and perhaps to travel through the gap. What could be more thrilling and worthy of celebration than that? It is a time to celebrate sweet bounty, as the harvest is brought in. It is a time of excitement and pleasure for children before the dark sets in. We should all celebrate that.

In Celtic Ireland the name Leo was Lugh, another solar hero and mystic. In Wales he was Llew, to the Romans Lugus, to the Sumerians Lughal. Its not the same dude on walkabout, it's the Astrological sign of Leo. In the Christian iconography we have one of the Evangelists represented by a Lion. In the Nativity scenes we see 4 animals around the cradle of the Son/Sun king. One of these is also a Lion. Christians probably believe that there was one in the area and just happened to wander into the inn to take a peek at sleeping Jesus. Good thing it wasn't very hungry.

Well you know, the comic strip [Doctor Strange]... yeah, was an Asian man, in fact, a very ancient Tibetan man living on the top of a mountain. The film script that I was given wasn't an Asian man, so I wasn't asked to play an Asian man - I was asked to play an ancient Celtic person.

People are fooled by the colour of my skin. I grew up on the north side of Fredericton in a Celtic culture with an Acadian choir. Don't let the black fool you. I'm actually quite white. When people give me permission to do anything, I simply say, "I would have taken it anyway, but I appreciate you thinking I care what you think." I don't do it with a sense of belligerence. I really do mean well.

I'm quite British; I've got big, flat feet, and I can't wear heels. I've got very, very pale Celtic skin, so my legs are always a frightening blue color. So when you take out clothes that reveal your legs, shoes that have any kind of heel, no shop will actually take my money.

Me being from a Celtic culture that tends to emphasize directness, conflict, openness has a big effect on my living in Japan, which tends to focus on indirectness, avoidance of conflict and keeping things close to your chest. So that has led to quite a lot of cultural misunderstandings in dealing with this East Asian culture I live in.

I always try to be ironistic in everything I do. I love people who understand humor and who live through humor. So, of course, I was not too serious covering such things as Motörhead or "Black Magic Woman" by Santana. But I was serious enough about Led Zeppelin and the Celtic song "Wild Mountain Thyme." In my life, serious and humor are always together.

If you're let go from Celtic, the club you support, and go to Queen's Park, people think it's a disaster. I don't think I cried, but I was very upset. As a young boy, your dream has been taken away. But I had good people around me, and it was probably the best thing that happened.

I would definitely return to Austria. They were all good experiences for me, but definitely Austria because there were some ancient Celtic, sacred sites that were in the forest that were quite beautiful.

There's some places where, I don't know if they're fiddle fans, or Natalie fans or if they just love Celtic music, but there's some places where there's just awesome crowds.

I was interested in a whole range of music that I used to play, popular music -- particularly American music -- that I heard a lot of when I was a teenager," "I think at a certain point it dawned on me that myself playing this music wasn't very convincing. It was more convincing when we played music that came from our own stock of tradition. ... I certainly feel a lot more comfortable playing so-called Celtic music.

I’ve got to push everything out of mind save the name of Jesus. I say His name over and over again, for as long as fifteen minutes, until I find my soul suspended in what the ancient Celtic Christians called a “thin place”–a state where the boundary between heaven and earth, divine and human, dissolves. You could say that I use the name of Jesus as my koan.

Each of us has something within us which won't be denied, even if it makes us scream aloud to die. We are what we are, that's all. Like the old Celtic legend of the bird with the thorn in its breast, singing its heart out and dying. Because it has to, its self-knowledge can't affect or change the outcome, can it? Everyone singing his own little song, convinced it's the most wonderful song the world has ever heard. Don't you see? We create our own thorns, and never stop to count the cost. All we can do is suffer the pain, and tell ourselves it was well worth it.

The reality, ... is that I need to win games of football. That's where the pressure and the sleepless nights come from. There's a fantasy pressure with this job but none of that matters. I need to make this team into a good unit, need to take it forward, give it a change of pace, need to get it younger and to use the experience of the lads we've got here. I need Lennon and Sutton and people like that to go and show how you handle being a Celtic player.

I am not a huge fan of the Celtic Tiger; I was so glad that you could see people being prosperous, that you didn't see people begging, that the city started looking good, that people had jobs. But it was almost like if you have such a hard time for so long, then you turn around and give a kid a check for a million quid, they're going to go nuts. And we went a bit nuts, we went up our ass.

There is an ancient Celtic axiom that says 'Good people drink good beer.' Which is true, then as now. Just look around you in any public barroom and you will quickly see: Bad people drink bad beer. Think about it.

I enjoyed it at Celtic and had some great moments and obviously some not so great moments.

When I was little I got to dribble the ball around while my older brother Paul, who played for a long time for Kilmarnock, my dad and my uncle Jimmy - who was at Celtic as a kid and played with Morton and Cambridge City - kicked it hard and I got punted out the way. But gradually I got allowed into the game.

Over the four years we have made massive progress: winning the League Championship (97/98); building the largest club stadium in the UK (60,000 seats); having the largest support (52,000 season book holders) of any club in Britain. This has been achieved by everyone who cares about Celtic working together towards a shared vision of football success and pride in a club which is part of our culture, open to all and a responsible member of the community working to help others where it can.

Celtic music is part of the language in Scotland and Ireland, where every kid and grandparent knows those songs, music by the likes of Woody Guthrie and Hank Snow is getting entrenched here. They are part of our cultural language. It's part of a living treasure. It doesn't just belong to a museum.

Adam was in the dream, too; he traced the tangled pattern of ink with his finger. He said, "Scio quid hoc est." As he traced it further and further down on the bare skin of Ronan's back, Ronan himself disappeared entirely, and the tattoo got smaller and smaller. It was a Celtic knot the size of a wafer, and then Adam, who had become Kavinsky, said "Scio quid estis vos." He put the tattoo in his mouth and swallowed it. Ronan woke with a start, ashamed and euphoric. The euphoria wore off long before the shame did. He was never sleeping again.

Ireland is a series of stories that have been told to us, starting with the Irish Celtic national revival. I never believed in 'Old Ireland.' It has been made all of kitsch by the diaspora, looking back and deciding what Ireland is. Yes, it is green. Yes, it is friendly. I can't think of anything else for definite.

As I have indicated some time ago, I intend to divest my shareholding when I leave the Club. In doing so, my overriding principle is that I shall do what I believe is best for the future of Celtic. I have also indicated my intention that my shareholding will be made available to be held broadly amongst the supporters and existing shareholders of the Club. I believe that this should produce the best structure of ownership for the Club and the Company.

An entirely new factor has appeared in the social development of the country, and this factor is the Irish-American, and his influence. To mature its powers, to concentrate its action, to learn the secret of its own strength and of England's weakness, the Celtic intellect has had to cross the Atlantic. At home it had but learned the pathetic weakness of nationality; in a strange land it realised what indomitable forces nationality possesses. What captivity was to the Jews, exile has been to the Irish: America and American influence have educated them.

'I have always been. I will always be. Come with me.' It's kind of the Celtic vibe. I am saying I will never change; I will always be the same. Follow me. This is what I stand for.

I have always been interested in mythology and history. The more I read, the more I realized that there have always been people at the edges of history that we know very little about. I wanted to use them in a story and bring them back into the public's consciousness. Similarly with mythology: everyone knows some of the Greek or Roman legends, and maybe some of the Egyptian or Norse stories too, but what about the other great mythologies: the Celtic, Chinese, Native American?

If I was making the decision normally, with my heart, I'd never leave Celtic. My life was great. I loved the city. I loved the people. I loved the club. I had a wonderful life. If you think of all those things, you'd never move.

I find very reasonable the Celtic belief that the souls of our dearly departed are trapped in some inferior being, in an animal, aplant, an inanimate object, indeed lost to us until the day, which for some never arrives, when we find that we pass near the tree, or come to possess the object which is their prison. Then they quiver, call us, and as soon as we have recognized them, the spell is broken. Freed by us, they have vanquished death and return to live with us.

I was a big fan of Gary Moore, he was my buddy and I miss him a lot. I loved his playing because you've got that passion; it was sort of a Celtic thing. The Irish and Scots they just go for it and not too worried about looking good. When I was in the states touring, I landed in Seattle to do a gig and one of the fans came to me and told me about Gary's death. It was very hard for me to carry on, it was awful.

These developments - a massive transfer of land by way of inheritance and purchase, an unprecedented rise in the profitability of land and increasing intermarriage between Celtic and English dynasties - helped to consolidate a new unitary ruling class in place of the more separate and specific landed establishments that had characterised England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland in the Tudor and Stuart eras.

You sleep with a dream of summer weather, wake to the thrum of rain—roped down by rain. Nothing out there but drop-heavy feathers of grass and rainy air. The plastic table on the terrace has shed three legs on its way to the garden fence. The mountains have had the sense to disappear. It's the Celtic temperament—wind, then torrents, then remorse. Glory rising like a curtain over distant water. Old stonehouse, having steered us through the dark, docks in a pool of shadow all its own. That widening crack in the gloom is like good luck. Luck, which neither you nor tomorrow can depend on.