In this cry of pain the inner consciousness of the people seems to lay itself bare for an instant, and to reveal the mood of beings who feel their isolation in the face of a universe that wars on them with winds and seas.

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

What is the price of a thousand horses against a son where there is one son only?

Foreign languages are another favourite topic, and as these men are bilingual they have a fair notion of what it means to speak and think in many different idioms.

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

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.

The drama, like the symphony, does not teach or prove anything.