Top 100 Frank McCourt Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.”

— Frank McCourt

2. “Sing your song. Dance your dance. Tell your tale.”

— Frank McCourt

3. “I am teaching. Storytelling is teaching.”

— Frank McCourt

4. “Keep scribbling! Something will happen.”

— Frank McCourt

5. “Your mind is a treasure house that you should stock well and it’s the one part of you the world can’t interfere with.”

— Frank McCourt

6. “The sky is the limit. You never have the same experience twice.”

— Frank McCourt

7. “A mother’s love is a blessing No matter where you roam. Keep her while you have her, You’ll miss her when she’s gone – Angela’s Ashes.”

— Frank McCourt

8. “You have to give yourself credit, not too much because that would be bragging.”

— Frank McCourt

9. “I learned the significance of my own insignificant life.”

— Frank McCourt

10. “Teacher? I never dreamed I could rise so high in the world.”

— Frank McCourt

11. “It’s lovely to know that the world can’t interfere with the inside of your head.”

— Frank McCourt

12. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned, it’s been a minute since my last confession.”

— Frank McCourt

13. “Stock your mind. It is your house of treasure and no one in the world can interfere with it.”

— Frank McCourt

14. “When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.”

— Frank McCourt

15. “After a full belly all is poetry.”

— Frank McCourt

16. “Love her as in childhood Through feeble, old and grey. For you’ll never miss a mother’s love Till she’s buried beneath the clay.”

— Frank McCourt

17. “It’s not enough to be American. You always have to be something else, Irish-American, German-American, and you’d wonder how they’d get along if someone hadn’t invented the hyphen.”

— Frank McCourt

18. “I know that big people don’t like questions from children. They can ask all the questions they like, How’s school? Are you a good boy? Did you say your prayers? but if you ask them did they say their prayers you might be hit on the head.”

— Frank McCourt

19. “There are so many ways of saying Hi. Hiss it, trill it, bark it, sing it, bellow it, laugh it, cough it. A simple stroll in the hallway calls for paragraphs, sentences in your head, decisions galore.”

— Frank McCourt

20. “I had to get rid of any idea of hell or any idea of the afterlife. That’s what held me, kept me down. So now I just have nothing but contempt for the institution of the church.”

— Frank McCourt

21. “Rest your eyes and then read till they fall out of your head.”

— Frank McCourt

22. “There’s nothing sillier in the world than a teacher telling you don’t do it after you already did it.”

— Frank McCourt

23. “Oh, God above, if heaven has a taste it must be an egg with butter and salt, and after the egg is there anything in the world lovelier than fresh warm bread and a mug of sweet golden tea?”

— Frank McCourt

24. “I don’t know what it means and I don’t care because it’s Shakespeare and it’s like having jewels in my mouth when I say the words.”

— Frank McCourt

25. “I am not living the American Dream; I am living the American fantasy.”

— Frank McCourt

26. “I say, Billy, what’s the use in playing croquet when you’re doomed? He says, Frankie, what’s the use of not playing croquet when you’re doomed?”

— Frank McCourt

27. “A job is death without dignity.”

— Frank McCourt

28. “You can’t teach in a vacuum. A good teacher relates the material to real life. You understand that, don’t you?”

— Frank McCourt

29. “Shakespeare is like mashed potatoes, you can never get enough of him.”

— Frank McCourt

30. “Limerick gained a reputation for piety, but we knew it was only the rain.”

— Frank McCourt

31. “I admire certain priests and nuns who go off on their own and do God’s work on their own, who help in the ghettos, but as far as the institution of the church is concerned, I think it is despicable.”

— Frank McCourt

32. “I am for who i was in the beginning but now is present and i exist in the future.”

— Frank McCourt

33. “He knows how it is to leave Ireland, did it himself and never got over it. You live in Los Angeles with sun and palm trees day in day out and you ask God if there’s any chance He could give you one soft rainy Limerick day.”

— Frank McCourt

34. “There’s no use saying anything in the schoolyard because there’s always someone with an answer and there’s nothing you can do but punch them in the nose and if you were to punch everyone who has an answer you’d be punching morning noon and night.”

— Frank McCourt

35. “Just let them sit in the goddam sun. But the world won’t let them because there’s nothing more dangerous than letting old farts sit in the sun. They might be thinking. Same thing with kids. Keep ’em busy or they might start thinking.”

— Frank McCourt

36. “If ’tis a sin, I don’t give a Fiddler’s fart!”

— Frank McCourt

37. “There’s nothing worse in the world than to owe and be beholden to anyone.”

— Frank McCourt

38. “In New York, with Prohibition in full swing, he thought he had died and gone o hell for his sins. Then he discovered speakeasies and he rejoiced.”

— Frank McCourt

39. “I can’t go back. The past won’t go away in this family...”

— Frank McCourt

40. “Stock your minds and you can move through the world resplendent.”

— Frank McCourt

41. “There’s no use asking more questions. If you ask a question they tell you it’s a mystery, you’ll understand when you grow up, be a good boy, ask your mother, ask your father, for the love o’ Jesus leave me alone, go out and play.”

— Frank McCourt

42. “The master says it’s a glorious thing to die for the Faith and Dad says it’s a glorious thing to die for Ireland and I wonder if there’s anyone in the world who would like us to live.”

— Frank McCourt

43. “The happy childhood is hardly worth your while.”

— Frank McCourt

44. “The master says it’s a glorious thing to die for the Faith and Dad says it’s a glorious thing to die for Ireland and I wonder if there’s anyone in the world who would like us to live. My brothers are dead and my sister is dead and I wonder if they died for Ireland or the Faith. Dad says they were too young to die for anything. Mam says it was disease and starvation and him never having a job. Dad says, Och, Angela, puts on his cap and goes for a long walk.”

— Frank McCourt

45. “I’m sitting up in the bed with my knees pulled to my chest and there are tears that won’t come to my eyes but beat instead like a small sea around my heart.”

— Frank McCourt

46. “Happiness is hard to recall. Its just a glow.”

— Frank McCourt

47. “If you were mean to your parents, they’d give you a good belt in the gob and send you flying across the room.”

— Frank McCourt

48. “This is the situation in the public schools of America: The farther you travel from the classroom the greater your financial and professional rewards.”

— Frank McCourt

49. “Clarke, define resplendent. I think it’s shining, sir. Pithy, Clarke, but adequate. McCourt, give us a sentence with pithy. Clarke is pithy but adequate, sir. Adroit, McCourt. You have a mind for the priesthood, my boy, or politics. Think of that.”

— Frank McCourt

50. “Saturday night when you have a few shillings in your pocket is the most delicious night of the week.”

— Frank McCourt