There is no topicmore soporific and generally boring than the topic of Ireland as Ireland, as a nation.

This is no book. Whoever touches this touches a man.

Nothing written for pay is worth printing. Only what has been written against the market.

A crowd pagan as ever imperial Rome was, eager, careless, with an animal vigour unlike that of any European crowd that I have ever looked at.

And the good writer chooses his words for their 'meaning', but that meaning is not a a set, cut-off thing like the move of knight or pawn on a chess-board. It comes up with roots, with associations, with how and where the word is familiarly used, or where it has been used brilliantly or memorably.

Poetry is about as much a 'criticism of life' as red-hot iron is a criticism of fire.

Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something.