“Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought - asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation.”

“We can only begin to live when we conceive life asTragedy.”

“We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.”

“Out of Ireland have we come. Great hatred, little room,Maimed us at the start.I carry from my mother's wombA fanatic heart.”

“What do we know but that we face one another in this place?”

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

“I believe when I am in the mood that all nature is full of people whom we cannot see, and that some of these are ugly or grotesque, and some wicked or foolish, but very many beautiful beyond any one we have ever seen, and that these are not far away....the simple of all times and the wise men of ancient times have seen them and even spoken to them.”