... in general, the Anglo-Irish do not make good dancers; they are too spritely and conscious; they are incapable of one kind of trance or of being seemingly impersonal. And, for the formal, pure dance they lack the formality: about their stylishness (for they have stylishness) there is something impromptu, slightly disorderly.

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

We are minor in everything but our passions.

No, it is not only our fate but our business to lose innocence, and once we have lost that, it is futile to attempt a picnic in Eden.

Childish fantasy, like the sheath over the bud, not only protects but curbs the terrible budding spirit, protects not only innocence from the world, but the world from the power of innocence.

Wariness had driven away poetry; from hesitating to feel came the moment when you no longer could.

the process of reading is reciprocal; the book is no more than a formula, to be furnished out with images out of the reader's mind.