The Irish landowner, partly from laziness but also from an indifferent delicacy, does not interfere in the lives of the people round. Sport and death are the two great socializing factors in Ireland, but these cannot operate the whole time: on the whole, the landowner leaves his tenants and work-people to make their own mistakes, while he makes his.

It is not our exalted feelings, it is our sentiments that build the necessary home.

Habit is not mere subjugation, it is a tender tie; when one remembers habit it seems to have been happiness.

At the age of twelve I was finding the world too small: it appeared to me like a dull, trim back garden, in which only trivial games could be played.

One can live in the shadow of an idea without grasping it.

to leap is not only to leap, it is to hit the ground somewhere.

nobody ever dies of an indignity.