George William Russell Quotes

We are tired who follow after fantasy and truth that flies: You with only look and laughter stain our hearts with richest dyes.

Twilight, a timid, fawn, went glimmering by, and Night, the dark-blue hunter, followed fast.

Forgive me, Spirit of my spirit, for this, that I have found it easier to read the mystery told in tears and understood Thee better in sorrow than in joy.

Seek on earth what you have found in heaven.

After the spiritual powers, there is no thing in the world more unconquerable than the spirit of nationality. ... The spirit of nationality in Ireland will persist even though the mightiest of material powers be its neighbor.

In the lost boyhood of Judas, Christ was betrayed.

People tell me that the countryside must always be stupid and backward, and I get angry, as if it were said that only townspeople had immortal souls, and that it was only in the city that the flame of divinity breathed into the first men had an unobscured glow.

Ah, to think how thin the veil that lies Between the pain of hell and Paradise.

No leader, however great a personality he may be, is as important to a people as their own intellectual development.

Reason, alas, does not remove mountains. It only tries to walk around them, and see what is on the other side.

Any relations in a social order will endure if there is infused into them some of that spirit of human sympathy, which qualifies life for immortality.

Whiskey: a torchligh procession marching down your throat.

We may fight against what is wrong, but if we allow ourselves to hate, that is to insure our spiritual defeat and our likeness to what we hate.

A literary movement: five or six people who live in the same town and hate each other.

When steam first began to pump and wheels go round at so many revolutions per minute, what are called business habits were intended to make the life of man run in harmony with the steam engine, and his movement rival the train in punctuality.

You cannot evoke great spirits and eat plums at the same time.

There is a law in human nature which draws us to like what we passionately condemn.