“Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry.”

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

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

“Chance and Destiny have between them woven two-thirds of all history, and of the history of Ireland wellnigh the whole. The literature of a nation, on the other hand, is spun out of its heart. If you would know Ireland - body and soul - you must read its poems and stories. They came into existence to please nobody but the people of Ireland. Government did not make them on the one hand, nor bad seasons on the other. They are Ireland talking to herself.”

“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.”

“That beautiful mild woman for whose sakeThere's many a one shall find out all heartacheOn finding that her voice is sweet and lowReplied, 'To be born a woman is to know-Although they do not talk of it at school -That we must labor to be beautiful.”

“To long a sacrifice can make a stone of a heart”