For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.

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.

First, in the history of words there is much that indicates the history of men, and in comparing the speech of to-day with that ofyears ago, we have a useful illustration of the effect of external influences on the very words of a race.

Ulysses He ... saw the dark tangled curls of his bush floating, floating hair of the stream around the limp father of thousands, a languid flatong flower.

My intention was to write a chapter of the moral history of my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis.

Our civilization, bequeathed to us by fierce adventurers, eaters of meat and hunters, is so full of hurry and combat, so busy about many things which perhaps are of no importance, that it cannot but see something feeble in a civilization which smiles as it refuses to make the battlefield the test of excellence.

Ineluctable modality of the visible; at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read.