But we are living in a sceptical and, if I may use the phrase, a thought-tormented age: and sometimes I fear that this new generation, educated or hyper-educated as it is, will lack those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humour which belonged to an older day.

Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eons of the gods.

Do you know what a pearl is and what an opal is? My soul when you came sauntering to me first through those sweet summer evenings was beautiful but with the pale passionless beauty of a pearl. Your love has passed through me and now I feel my mind something like an opal, that is, full of strange uncertain hues and colours, of warm lights and quick shadows and of broken music.

All fiction is autobiographical fantasy.

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

I don't want to die. Damn death. Long live life.

Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.