There is no language like the Irish for soothing and quieting.

A translation is no translation unless it will give you the music of a poem along with the words of it.

A week of sweeping fogs has passed over and given me a strange sense of exile and desolation. I walk round the island nearly every day, yet I can see nothing anywhere but a mass of wet rock, a strip of surf, and then a tumult of waves.

In the middle classes the gifted son of a family is always the poorest -- usually a writer or artist with no sense for speculation -- and in a family of peasants, where the average comfort is just over penury, the gifted son sinks also, and is soon a tramp on the roadside.

The general knowledge of time on the island depends, curiously enough, on the direction of the wind.

I'm a good scholar when it comes to reading but a blotting kind of writer when you give me a pen.

There is no language like the Irish for soothing and quieting.