These Welsh quotes will inspire you. Welsh is a Brittonic language of the Celtic language family that is native to the Welsh people.
Below you will find a collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging Welsh quotes, Welsh sayings, and Welsh proverbs.
Best Welsh Quotes
- “At home I can become lazy and if a Welsh word is really long, I just replace it with English.” ~ Matthew Rhys
- “We’re sometimes treated like the stupid cousin, so I’m always drawn to characters that make you feel good about being Welsh.” ~ Matthew Rhys
- “I was shocked by the amount of Welsh people in L.A. We’d go to this British pub to watch the ‘Six Nations’ early in the morning and I remember the first time I walked in it was just a sea of red.” ~ Matthew Rhys
- “I think now, more than anytime I can remember, bands are sounding pretty similar whether they’re English or American, from Manchester or London… or Leeds or Welsh or Irish.” ~ Graham Coxon
-
“But it is my happiness to be half Welsh, and that the better half.” ~ Richard Cobden
- “God defend me from that Welsh fairy, Lest he transform me to a piece of cheese!” ~ William Shakespeare
- “By definition, you have to live until you die. Better to make that life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be.” ~ Irvine Welsh
- “Don’t ask me about emotions in the Welsh dressing room. I’m someone who cries when he watches Little House on the Prairie.” ~ Bob Norster
- “It’s a really exciting time to be involved in Welsh rugby.” ~ Jonah Lomu
-
“You think the Welsh are friendly, but the Irish are fabulous.” ~ Bonnie Tyler
- “I am the granddaughter of a Welsh coal miner who was determined that his kids get out of the mines. My dad got his first job when he was six years old, in a little village in Wales called Nantyffyllon, cleaning bottles at the Colliers Arms.” ~ Ann Romney
- “After Zorro, people spoke Spanish to me for ages. I’m Welsh but that movie instantly gave me a new ethnicity.” ~ Catherine Zeta-Jones
- “Most English-speaking people, for instance, will admit that cellar door is ‘beautiful’, especially if dissociated from its sense (and its spelling). More beautiful than, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful. Well then, in Welsh for me cellar doors are extraordinarily frequent.” ~ J. R. R. Tolkien
- “Thy tongue
Makes Welsh as sweet as ditties highly penn’d,
Sung by a fair queen in a summer’s bower,
With ravishing division, to her lute.” ~ William Shakespeare -
“I enjoy the freedom of the blank page.” ~ Irvine Welsh
- “Do not go gentle into that good night.” ~ Dylan Thomas
- “Sometimes ah think that people become junkies just because they subconsciously crave a wee bit ay silence.” ~ Irvine Welsh
- “We start off with high hopes, then we bottle it. We realise that we’re all going to die, without really finding out the big answers. We develop all those long-winded ideas which just interpret the reality of our lives in different ways, without really extending our body of worthwhile knowledge, about the big things, the real things. Basically, we live a short disappointing life; and then we die. We fill up our lives with shite, things like careers and relationships to delude ourselves that it isn’t all totally pointless.” ~ Irvine Welsh
- “I didn’t have any concept of Trainspotting being published. It was a selfish act. I did it for myself.” ~ Irvine Welsh
-
“Few things sound so beautiful as the poetic accent of a Welsh woman.” ~ Steve Fowler
- “I think young writers should get other degrees first, social sciences, arts degrees or even business degrees. What you learn is research skills, a necessity because a lot of writing is about trying to find information.” ~ Irvine Welsh
- “Anyone who thinks that wind factories are environmentally friendly should Google “Cefn Croes Photo Gallery”, to see 100 chilling pictures showing how many miles of unspoiled Welsh countryside were disfigured to create the largest industrial site in Britain: all to “save” annually less than a quarter of the CO₂ emissions from a single jumbo jet.” ~ Christopher Booker
- “All my friends are Welsh, I speak Welsh, and I feel very Welsh.” ~ Taron Egerton
- “His mother had told him that when you looked into the eyes of God at the pearly gates, all the questions you ever had were answered. Ronan had a lot of questions. Waking Glendower might be like that. Fewer angels attending, and maybe a heavier Welsh accent. Slightly less judgment.” ~ Maggie Stiefvater
-
“Names are not always what they seem. The common Welsh name Bzjxxllwcp is pronounced Jackson.” ~ Mark Twain
- “I’ve been lucky that I’ve performed with a lot of the classical people I’ve wanted to work with so I’d like to do something that people didn’t see coming. Like Madonna, or being Welsh – the Tom Jones thing. Or somebody suggested N-Dubz – that would be brilliant!” ~ Katherine Jenkins
- “Some ministers preach from notes and some don’t. They have argued about it for centuries. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. Two Welsh preachers were on their way to a meeting. One noticed that the other carried written outlines. ‘Ah,’ he remonstrated, ‘you cannot carry fire on paper.’ ‘True,’ replied his companion, ‘but you can use paper to start a fire!'” ~ Vance Havner
- “The Welsh are the only nation in the world that has produced no graphic or plastic art, no architecture, no drama. They just sing. Sing and blow down wind instruments of plated silver.” ~ Evelyn Waugh
- “Nigeria is not a nation. It is a mere geographical expression. There are no ‘Nigerians’ in the same sense as there are ‘English,’ ‘Welsh,’ or ‘French.’ The word ‘Nigerian’ is merely a distinctive appellation to distinguish those who live within the boundaries of Nigeria and those who do not.” ~ Obafemi Awolowo
-
“To be honest, I think that I am a bit of a singer, coming from Wales; being Welsh, we are all very proud of our singing heritage.” ~ Ioan Gruffudd
- “As a Welshman that can’t sing, I never feel more proud to be Welsh than when I hear the Treorchy Male Choir – the Master Choir of them all. If I could sing I would apply for membership myself.” ~ Anthony Hopkins
- “Thimerosal is commonly used as an antiseptic/preservative in vaccines in the range of 1:10,000 to 1:20,000. Welsh’s and Hunter’s 1940 findings, applied to current thimerosal use in vaccines, lead to the conclusion that thimerosal completely inhibits phagocytosis in blood, one of the body’s most vital immune defenses!” ~ Jamie Murphy
- “Welsh is my mother tongue, and my children speak it. If you come and live in this community you’ll work out pretty quickly that it’s beneficial to learn the language, because if you’re going to the pub or a cafe you need to be a part of the local life.” ~ Bryn Terfel
- “The Welsh are not like any other people in Britain, and they know how separate they are. They are the Celts, the tough little wine-dark race who were the original possessors of the island, who never mixed with the invaders coming later from the east, but were slowly driven into the western mountains.” ~ Laurie Lee
-
“As for waxing, I’ve never waxed in my life and I never would. I’m extremely Welsh, so I draw the line at removing body hair.” ~ Matthew Rhys
- “Maybe because English is my second language, maybe I just translate mundane clichés from the Welsh language and they sound original in English. I am going through a bit of an obsession with bad puns. I am hoping I’ll grow out of it. Maybe it’s just a phase.” ~ Gruff Rhys
- “I think the French agonise more about being French, I don’t think English think about being English that much. I think the Scottish think about being Scottish and the Welsh think about being Welsh, but the English don’t really care. But the French think about it all the time, it’s an absolute preoccupation.” ~ Jonathan Meades
- “In one of the Welsh counties is a small village called A—–. It is somewhat removed from the high road, and is, therefore, but little known to those luxurious amateurs of the picturesque, who view nature through the windows of a carriage and four.” ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
- “I think I actually did a production of “Under Milkwood,” this Welsh play, with my drama group (at school), and I always remember taking everything far too seriously, and that it wasn’t just a hobby but something I wanted to keep on doing.” ~ Felicity Jones
-
“I like the Stereophonics. I know the lead singer, Kelly Jones, and theres the Welsh connection.” ~ Ian Rush
- “For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, there was an Irish ora German girl scrubbing floors in that home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making “ladies” dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase.” ~ Stephanie Coontz
- “Being hapa, or more specifically, half-Japanese half-Euro mutt (English, Irish, Scottish, Dutch, French, Welsh, German. . .in case you were wondering), has definitely helped shape who I am. It’s very cool to get to identify and learn about all these unique cultures and I think it’s helped put the world in perspective.” ~ Kina Grannis
- “If you go back a century in Europe, all over the place people were speaking different languages. There were dozens of languages in France and Italy, and they’re all called French [and Italian], but they were not mutually comprehensible. They were different languages. And they have mostly disappeared in the last century or so. Some are being preserved, like Welsh, some are being revived, like Basque or Catelan to some extent. There are plenty of people in Europe who can’t talk to their grandmother because they talk a different language.” ~ Noam Chomsky
- “Welsh is now almost a national language in Wales. The Scottish dialects are reviving to some extent. I don’t think it’s a major thing, but it’s there, and it’s happening elsewhere.” ~ Noam Chomsky
-
“I’ve read a lot of Irvine Welsh – Trainspotting, Glue – he’s written some beauties.” ~ Andrew Flintoff
- “Probably. It’s a weird thing with accents.When I was in drama school my accent probably got stronger because of that sense of identity when you leave home and go to somewhere where there are loads of people from different places. Holding on to being Welsh and where I was from was a real crutch for me.” ~ Iwan Rheon
- “Deploring change is the unchangeable habit of all Englishmen. If you find any important figures who really like change, such as Bernard Shaw, Keir Hardie, Lloyd George, Selfridge or Disraeli, you will find that they are not really English at all, but Irish, Scotch, Welsh, American or Jewish. Englishmen make changes, sometimes great changes. But, secretly or openly, they always deplore them.” ~ Raymond Postgate
- “RAREBIT n. A Welsh rabbit, in the speech of the humorless, who point out that it is not a rabbit. To whom it may be solemnly explained that the comestible known as toad-in-a-hole is really not a toad, and that riz-de-veau à la financière is not the smile of a calf prepared after the recipe of a she banker.” ~ Ambrose Bierce
- “There’s a Welsh poet, R.S. Thomas. He was a very crotchety, strange man, but his poems are wonderful. He was nominated for the Nobel in the 1990s but never won.” ~ Stephen Dobyns
-
“Never get mixed up in a Welsh wrangle. It doesn’t end in blows like an Irish one, but goes on forever.” ~ Evelyn Waugh
- “Those songs [from church], I think, shaped to some degree how I would evolve as a writer, pentameter of songs, the melodies of those kind of hillbilly hymns – I used to refer to them – because they were not Southern gospel as much as they were passed down from Scottish Welsh Protestant hymnals.” ~ Dwight Yoakam
- “Because it’s my first language, all the literature that I’ve read and all the things that I’ve been inspired by that have been written in Welsh have moved me beyond anything that I’ve experienced in any other language.” ~ Gwenno
- “No man, however civilized, can listen for very long to African drumming, or Indian chanting, or Welsh hymn singing, and retain intact his critical and self-conscious personality.” ~ Aldous Huxley
- “There is nothing like the sound of a Welsh Male Choir and the Treorchy is the finest. They have represented the best of the Welsh voice for generations with honour and integrity. They are international ambassadors.” ~ Tom Jones
-
“English, however, is kinky. It has a predilection for dressing up like Welsh on lonely nights.” ~ John H. McWhorter
- “They [Rappites] were moving from Southern Indiana to Pennsylvania, where they had originally settled when they came from Germany. They were looking for someone who wanted to buy a pre-built town, which wouldn’t have been appropriate for any kind of normal settlement. That’s when Robert Owen [Welsh industrialist and utopian socialist] buys the village and founds New Harmony.” ~ Christine Jennings
- “My parents aren’t artists or anything, but growing up in Wales, especially in a Welsh language school and community, they have this thing called the Eisteddfod where people compete in singing and acting and dancing and oratory all sorts of things. From a very young age, it’s been a part of my upbringing.” ~ Iwan Rheon
- “I think drama school really teaches you how to annunciate; you’re conscious that people might not understand you if you speak too fast and too Welsh.” ~ Iwan Rheon
- “Weirdly, when I was in drama school my accent probably got stronger because of that sense of identity when you leave home and go to somewhere where there are loads of people from different places. Holding on to being Welsh and where I was from was a real crutch for me.” ~ Iwan Rheon
-
“The Welsh… I mean, what are they for?” ~ Anne Robinson
- “I should have said Welsh has always attracted me. By its style and sound more than any other, ever though I first only saw it on coal trucks, I always wanted to know what it was about.” ~ J. R. R. Tolkien
- “I was the adoring son of a Welsh-Irish father, a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, a Catholic Knight of Columbus who was a blue-collar, trade union organizer and, not surprisingly, a fervid Nixon-hater.” ~ Bob Gunton
- “You know I could have stayed in my comfortable chair in South Wales having the first Welsh team that got promoted and been there a number of years, but for me I wanted to work at a club that was world class and at the very, very top.” ~ Brendan
- “I’m half Scottish, half Welsh and I regard red hair as perfectly ordinary. And to set the record straight, contrary to reports, he has never referred to himself as the ‘Ginger Ninja’.” ~ Helen McCrory
- “I’m half-Welsh, half-Russian. My maternal grandmother is Russian. I’ve very much a mongrel, which is good in a way because it makes me quite a blank canvas.” ~ Sophia Myles
