Irish author Quotes

“I spit into the face of time that has transfigured me”

“Irish poets, learn your trade, sing whatever is well made, scorn the sort now growing up all out of shape from toe to top.”

“Be secret and exult, Because of all things known That is most difficult.”

“Man is in love and loveswhat vanishes,What more is there to say?”

“Only the dead can be forgiven; But when I think of that my tongue's a stone.”

“We taste and feel and see the truth. We do not reason ourselves into it.”

“Come away, O human child: To the waters and the wild with a fairy, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.”

“Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labour of its unfamiliar thought.”

“I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.”

“Overcome the Empyrean; hurlHeaven and Earth out of their places,That in the same calamityBrother and brother, friend and friend,Family and family,City and city may contend.”

“Many ingenious lovely things are gone / That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude.”

“Brown Penny I WHISPERED, 'I am too young,' And then, 'I am old enough'; Wherefore I threw a penny To find out if I might love. 'Go and love, go and love, young man, If the lady be young and fair.' Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny, I am looped in the loops of her hair. O love is the crooked thing, There is nobody wise enough To find out all that is in it, For he would be thinking of love Till the stars had run away And the shadows eaten the moon. Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny, One cannot begin it too soon.”

“We have lit upon the gentle, sensitive mind And lost the old nonchalance of the hand; Whether we have chosen chisel, pen or brush, We are but critics, or but half create.”

“Man has created death.”

“Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; youngWe loved each other and were ignorant.”

“When two close kindred meet What better than call a dance?.”

“Somewhere beyond the curtain Of distorting days Lives that lonely thing That shone before these eyes Targeted, trod like Spring.”

“I think it better that in times like these a poet's mouth be silent, for in truth we have no gift to set a statesman right.”

“O heart, we are old;The living beauty is for younger men:We cannot pay its tribute of wild tears.”

“The Mask "Put off that mask of burning gold With emerald eyes." "O no, my dear, you make so bold To find if hearts be wild and wise, And yet not cold." "I would but find what's there to find, Love or deceit." "It was the mask engaged your mind, And after set your heart to beat, Not what's behind." "But lest you are my enemy, I must enquire." "O no, my dear, let all that be, What matter, so there is but fire In you, in me?"”

“Literature is always personal, always one man's vision of the world, one man's experience, and it can only be popular when men are ready to welcome the visions of others.”

“Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn,Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight,Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.”

“An age is the reversal of an age:When strangers murdered Emmet, Fitzgerald, Tone,We lived like men that watch a painted stage.What matter for the scene, the scene once gone:It had not touched our lives.”

“What the world's million lips are searching for, must be substantial somewhere.”

“All the stream that's roaring byCame out of a needle's eye.”