Various

“ The same spirit which actuated Sam Adams and John Hancock and all our great revolutionary sires when they rose to arms, burned within his breast, when, as a boy, he threw his life, his fortune, and his future into the cause of Ireland. They succeeded, and he failed, but was not crushed. I am reminded, too, of a marked and striking similarity between him and Lafayette. Lafayette threw his young sword and his boyhood, here, into the cause of liberty; O'Reilly did the same, not in Ireland, but for the liberty of Ireland. ”

“ It is apparent in the faces of all before me, the spontaneous feeling of the heart that has called together this assemblage to-night in these vast numbers to pay a tribute of our respect and a token of our affection and esteem for the great and good man whose untimely death we deplore. For twenty years he has been among us, one of us, toiling in his daily toil, rejoicing in his hours of festivity and mirth, attending to all the duties of a citizen, and all the duties of a man. ”

“ The daily contemplation of these historic scenes awakened in us common sentiments of patriotism and religion. From our doors we could see the croppies' mound, the grave of the men who died for Ireland in '98, and the Hill of Slane on which St. Patrick lighted that Easter fire that proved the morning star of Christianity to Ireland.
When we were boys the patriotic fervor aroused in men's minds by the O'Connell agitation had not so far lost its force as to leave no impress on our youthful souls. ”

“ As an orator who found his eloquence in his own heart, and who poured it out because of the deep well from which his inspiration was drawn, he is claimed by all champions of humanity, by all lovers of their kind.
As a journalist, strong in his own convictions, yet recognizing that not what a man says, but what he is, is the true test, he grew nearer and nearer, as his years went on, to that broadest plane where duty to his God and to his fellow-man, and not pride of opinion nor pride of statement, takes the first place. ”

“ I once stood by the bier of a friend of mine who died at exactly the age at which John Boyle O'Reilly left us. The clergyman told us that the man died of overwork. In a limited sense he was right; in a broader view he was radically wrong.
One of the most curious things to me in human nature is to notice the way in which men wake up at maturity and show the qualities with which they are endowed. From out of the ranks of many thousands of men of ordinary capacity comes a rare man. He has ambition, industry, application, persistency, genius. ”

“ And yet his popularity was so great, that had he chosen to accept public office, he could have aimed high with success, without the aid of the arts of practical politics. He would no more deign to flatter the populace than to cringe to power, or fawn upon tyrants. It was a privilege to know John Boyle O'Reilly, and an honor to be counted among his friends.
Without any credentials save his own genius and sterling character, he rapidly won his way to universal recognition in this city. His fame as a poet soon became national, and finally coextensive with the domain of the English language. ”

“ We none of us know where it is to end. We none of us know even how to state the new problems of the future. But we know that in these problems O'Reilly with his heart and his head, with his power of reconciliation not merely between different races and different religions, but between rich and poor, between learned and ignorant—we know what an influence he might have exerted, and we can deplore that. ”

“ The pages of history, all through the ages, are dotted with achievements of men of his class. They cannot stop if they would; they would not if they could. Why it is, no man can determine; and we can only believe that God in his infinite wisdom has designed that every man must work out his destiny with the ability and with the impetus which he finds in his soul.
John Boyle O'Reilly was one of those rare, ambitious, active, industrious, zealous, enthusiastic men who had a great deal of work to do in this world. ”

“ But there are some qualities which need no perspective,—the quality of friendship, that subtile grace which binds kindred souls together, which betrays itself in the grasp of the hand, the glance of the eye, the intonations of the voice, and those unselfish deeds which friendship prompts. We cannot be too near that to appreciate it; the true friendship may grow firm in the memory, and become more sacred with time. And it is one of those things that the nearer we are to it the more we feel it is a living power. ”

“ I don't think so, because no too hard-worked man could be as genial, as pleasant, and bright at all times and under all circumstances, when not suffering from some specific illness, as John Boyle O'Reilly. A man who could take his canoe and paddle it from the head of the Connecticut river into Long Island sound was able to do all the work he needed and ought to. The man that swam the angry ocean for miles to get his liberty was a man that could not be overworked on God's footstool. ”

“ This man, a Roman Catholic, on New England soil, in daily association with the sons of Puritans,—the sons of men who hated the Papacy as the instrument of Satan, and whose descendants have not entirely got beyond the narrowness of their forefathers,—could yet describe in fitting terms, and show the appreciation of his mind and soul for the achievements of the founders of New England.
So that it is not only Ireland and America that may mourn his death, it is humanity, civilization, our common Christianity.
What honor shall we pay to such a man? ”

“ I am glad of the privilege of being allowed to pay this slight tribute to his worth, and to do honor to his memory. Now that he is lost to us, we begin more fully to realize what a space he filled in our lives and in the community, and what a valuable treasure he was. His influence will long remain among us active for good. The charitable institutions he helped to found or foster will remain memorials of his goodness of heart and his love of humanity.
As a man we esteemed him; as a fellow-Catholic we are proud of him; as a patriot we applaud him; as a poet we admire him ”

“ All agree that to the land of his adoption he has given the best talent of his life. And if there was any drawback from that, it was, I have thought, that he was so in hopes that America should succeed, and thus save Ireland, that he was a little Irish in that as well as in everything else.
Of his genius as a poet, drawing from the very heart for inspiration, all men that have read what has been written of verse in the last twenty years know. That he was a natural orator in a very high degree is very easily expressed by saying that he was an educated Irishman. ”

“ And on other questions that lie before us in the future—on the questions that are gathering behind all the present questions and that bid fair to give the next generation a harder problem, much harder to solve than the mere question of slavery, Boyle O'Reilly is lost at the beginning of a contest where his fire and his judgment will greatly be regretted. ”

“ Among those who have lived for humanity, who have lived for their country, who have lived for their people, who have lived for their religious creed and their friendships, whose broad humane hearts have been able to tolerate distinctions and difference of politics and creed, so long as they were honest and not offensive, the personality of John Boyle O'Reilly will stand prominent from generation to generation ”

“ As a man he strove for humanity with earnest and unfaltering trust, believing that out of his manhood man's redemption under God would come.
And so in the minds of his fellow-citizens he stands as the type of young, strong, vigorous manhood, an inspiration and an encouragement.
"Wherever man recognizes manhood, wherever doubt and distrust come between man and his ideal, the enthusiasm, the virility, the faith of John Boyle O'Reilly in his brother man may be remembered, and doubt and distrust will give way, and man everywhere lay claim to him. ”

“ It is hardly necessary; you who knew him so well need not be told what a delightful comrade he was, or what an inspiration he proved at times to the weary and the heavy-laden, when the battle seemed well-nigh hopeless. Many of those young men have made signal triumphs in different lines of work, and some of them are here to-night. It seems to me, however, that, in a large and broad sense, of all the group, John Boyle O'Reilly made the most conspicuous and gratifying success, especially from a journalistic and literary point of view. ”

“ The rays of the moon reflected in the water made it a pathway of light, reaching from the horizon almost to my very feet, seeming like a pathway for the footsteps of the angels as they go about on their noiseless errands among men. ”

“ The mystery of taking him we cannot fathom; we can only trust in the wisdom of the Power that guides and rules. But there is this which we may say, that when the sons of the Pilgrims and the sons of Irishmen, in that time now at hand, emigrants walking shoulder to shoulder, shall join hands together to rear a more perfect civilization than the world has yet seen; when the descendants, if you please, of Cromwell's soldiers, in goodly intercourse with the sons of those who were their victims, shall march together towards the realization of the highest and noblest system of humanity ”

“ For a quality like this, nations have reared the proudest memorials to their sons, and given them the most glorious pages in their history; yet there are those who say that patriotism is a narrow virtue, that it fences off nations, breeds animosity between races, that you must not do anything to foster it, that future glory is a mere vanity, and that we must all put ourselves on the higher plane of humanity. ”

“ And no man in this present time has had more of these qualities which bind men together, which draw faith and impetus of those who are kindred minds, than he.
There are other qualities which can be immediately appreciated; for example, patriotism, that subtile sentiment which leads a man to feel that the spot on which he was born is the most precious spot of earth that is, which induces him to forget everything, and to give all that he has, even life itself, for the defence of kindred and home. ”

“ I remember that from his youthful days up to the close of that quiet and solemn moment when his soul was borne on in the arms of his Saviour to its peaceful and eternal rest, he never permitted an opportunity to pass him when he could strike a blow for the people in his native island, nor did his great heart ever fail to beat for the downtrodden of all mankind. ”

“ In the case of Boyle O'Reilly, attractiveness was a weak word for that charming personality which made itself felt by all who came near him, and which caused his fellow-members of the Papyrus Club—a collection of gentlemen who, being mostly journalists and literary men, are as little liable to compliment one another as any set I know—to declare in their funeral resolutions that he, their first president, was the best beloved of all their members. ”

“ The brilliancy of his mind illuminated every subject that came within the circle of his thought, reminded one of a strength as fathomless and as resistless as the sea, and there was in him so much of true humanity that we could not come into his presence without being affected as by a tonic. ”

“ When some men succeed, others with a like measure of prosperity, or with a little more or a little less, are frequently jealous when one of their number stands out prominently, even when the achievement is deserving. No man was ever jealous of John Boyle O'Reilly. ”

“ His mind was too sane to rebel against these limitations, and too pious to blame the Creator for not making man perfect. Hence, he was free from that intellectual pride and self-sufficiency which impel some men to try to hew out for themselves a pathway in the mysterious regions of religion, and to invent a way of salvation all their own.
His open profession of faith in the Catholic religion was of great service to the church in this country. It showed once more what has so often been demonstrated, that great mental endowments and intellectual freedom are not incompatible with Catholic faith. ”

“ Nay, he could rise not only above the prejudices of his race and the traditions of his nation, but above even the scruples of his religion, and that is the hardest thing for man to accomplish in this world. ”