“The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad, For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.”

“There are a great many good people, and a great many sane people here this afternoon. Unfortunately, by a kind of coincidence, all the good people are mad, and all the sane people are wicked.”

“The great error consists in supposing that poetry is an unnatural form of language. We should all like to speak poetry at the moment when we truly live, and if we do not speak it, it is because we have an impediment in our speech. It is not song that is the narrow or artificial thing, it is conversation that is a broken and stammering attempt at song. When we see men in a spiritual extravaganza, like Cyrano de Bergerac, speaking in rhyme, it is not our language disguised or distorted, but our language rounded and made whole.”

“He may be mad, but there's method in his madness. There nearly always is method in madness. It's what drives men mad, being methodical.”

“A man who says that no patriot should attack the [war] until it is over is not worth answering intelligently; he is saying that no good son should warn his mother off a cliff until she has fallen over it. But there is an anti-patriot who honestly angers honest men…he is the uncandid candid friend; the man who says, "I am sorry to say we are ruined," and is not sorry at all…Granted that he states only facts, it is still essential to know what are his emotions, what is his motive. It may be that twelve hundred men in Tottenham are down with smallpox; but we want to know whether this is stated by some great philosopher who wants to curse the gods, or only by some common clergyman who wants to help the men.”

“The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man.”

“And well may God with the serving-folkCast in His dreadful lot;Is not He too a servant,And is not He forgot?For was not God my gardenerAnd silent like a slave;That opened oaks on the uplandsOr thicket in graveyard gave?And was not God my armourer,All patient and unpaid,That sealed my skull as a helmet,And ribs for hauberk made?Did not a great grey servantOf all my sires and me,Build this pavilion of the pines,And herd the fowls and fill the vines,And labour and pass and leave no signsSave mercy and mystery?For God is a great servant,And rose before the day,From some primordial slumber torn;But all we living later bornSleep on, and rise after the morn,And the Lord has gone away.On things half sprung from sleeping,All sleeping suns have shone,They stretch stiff arms, the yawning trees,The beasts blink upon hands and knees,Man is awake and does and sees-But Heaven has done and gone.For who shall guess the good riddleOr speak of the Holiest,Save in faint figures and failing words,Who loves, yet laughs among the swords,Labours, and is at rest?But some see God like Guthrum,Crowned, with a great beard curled,But I see God like a good giant,That, laboring, lifts the world.”