Better far off to leave half the ruins and nine-tenths of the churches unseen and to see well the rest; to see them not once, but again and often again; to watch them, to learn them, to live with them, to love them, till they have become a part of life and life's recollections.

What a person praises is perhaps a surer standard, even than what he condemns, of his own character, information and abilities.

To Adam Paradise was home. To the good among his descendants home is paradise.

Every Irishman, the saying goes, has a potato in his head.

The greatest truths are the simplest, and so are the greatest men.

Thought is the wind, knowledge the sail, and mankind the vessel.

Nothing is farther than earth from heaven; nothing is nearer than heaven to earth.