In my childhood there was every year at my old home, Roxborough, or, as it is called in Irish, Cregroostha, a great sheep-shearing that lasted many days. On the last evening there was always a dance for the shearers and their helpers, and two pipers used to sit on chairs placed on a corn-bin to make music for the dance.

It is better to be tied to any thorny bush than to be with a cross man.

There is no sin coveting things are of no great use or profit, but would show out good and have some grandeur around them.

It is not always them that has the most that makes the most show.

From the sons of Ith, the first of the Gael to get his death in Ireland, there came in the after time Fathadh Canaan, that got the sway over the whole world from the rising to the setting sun, and that took hostages of the streams and the birds and the languages.

It's best make changes little by little, the same as you'd put clothes upon a growing child.

I said, in talking, that I felt more and more the time wasted that was not spent in Ireland.