The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring. Paintings of Moreau are paintings of ideas. The deepest poetry of Shelley, the words of Hamlet bring our mind into contact with the eternal wisdom; Plato's world of ideas. All the rest is the speculation of schoolboys for schoolboys.

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen.

Lord, heap miseries upon us yet entwine our arts with laughters low.

Satan, really, is the romantic youth of Jesus re-appearing for a moment.

Sometimes he caught himself listening to the sound of his own voice. He thought that in her eyes he would ascent to an angelical stature; and, as he attached the fervent nature of his companion more and more closely to him, he heard the strange impersonal voice which he recognised as his own, insisting on the soul's incurable lonliness. We cannot give ourselves, it said: we are our own.

There's many a true word spoken in jest.

It seems to me you do not care what banality a man expresses so long as he expresses it in Irish.