“My days – the blossom of my youth and the flower of my manhood – have been darkened by the dreariness of servitude. In this my native land – in the land of my sires – I am degraded without fault as an alien and an outcast.”
July 1812, aged 37, reflecting on the failure to secure equal rights or Catholic Emancipation for Catholics in Ireland. Quoted from Vol I, p. 185, of O'Connell, J. (ed.) The Life and Speeches of Daniel O'Connell, 2 Vols, Dublin, 1846)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Daniel O'Connell10
Irish political leader 1775–1847Related quotes
“Sir, I am not in your land, but in my own.”
El Cid (1048–1099) Spanish nobleman and military leader
El Cid's answer to the king when ordered to quit his land; in Chronicle of the Cid, from the Spanish by Robert Southey (1808), Book III, §18, p. 96
Attributed
“Like you, an alien in a land unknown,
I learn to pity woes so like my own.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century
Aeneis, Book I, lines 889–890.
The Works of Virgil (1697)
Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930) Russian and Soviet poet, playwright, artist and stage and film actor
"Back Home!", first version (1926); translation from Patricia Blake (ed.) The Bedbug and Selected Poetry (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975) p. 36
Isaac Watts (1674–1748) English hymnwriter, theologian and logician
Song 5, "Praise for Birth and Education in a Christian Land", stanza 3. Cf. Psalms 119:72 (KJV): "The law of thy mouth is better unto me than thousands of gold and silver."
1710s, Divine Songs Attempted in the Easy Language of Children (1715)
“This is my happy land, my home, my pride.”
Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet
Esta é a ditosa pátria minha amada.
Stanza 21, line 1 (tr. Richard Francis Burton)
Epic poetry, Os Lusíadas (1572), Canto III
“I have come to make my grave in this land.”
William the Silent (1533–1584) stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht, leader of the Dutch Revolt
William as he led his army into the Netherlands (1572) as quoted in William the Silent, William of Nausau, Prince of Orange, 1533-1584 (1944)
