“To succeed is nothing, it's an accident. but to feel no doubts about oneself is something very different: it is character”

“There was no doubt about it: if you wanted to succeed you had to go away. You could do nothing in Dublin.”

“To describe something as an accident is a lazy way of exempting oneself from the obligation of investigating or even preventing it in the first place.”

“Over there you think of nothing but becoming President of the United States some day. Potentially every man is Presidential timber. Here it's different. Here every man is potentially a zero. If you become something or somebody it is an accident, a miracle.”

“There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof Ihope there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I am notunderstood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profoundis couched underneath; and again, that whatever word or sentenceis printed in a different character shall be judged to contain somethingextraordinary either of wit or sublime.”

“The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature.”