Swift has sailed into his rest; Savage indignation there Cannot lacerate his breast Imitate him if you dare, World-besotted traveler; he Served human liberty.
Once you attempt legislation upon religious grounds, you open the way for every kind of intolerance and religious persecution.
A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought, our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
But was there ever dog that praised his fleas?
I am of a healthy long lived race, and our minds improve with age.
Talent perceives differences; genius, unity.
An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick, unless soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing for every tatter in its mortal dress.
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.
I balanced all, brought all to mind, the years to come seemed waste of breath, a waste of breath the years behind, in balance with this life, this death.
You know what the Englishman’s idea of compromise is? He says, Some people say there is a God. Some people say there is no God. The truth probably lies somewhere between these two statements.
The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.
What do we know but that we face one another in this place?
Irish poets, learn your trade, sing whatever is well made, scorn the sort now growing up all out of shape from toe to top.
I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.
Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice?
Out of Ireland have we come, great hatred, little room, maimed us at the start. I carry from my mother’s womb a fanatic heart.
A pity beyond all telling is hid in the heart of love.
We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding something outside us.
I know that I shall meet my fate somewhere among the clouds above; those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love.
This melancholy London – I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air.