We would not give up our own country - Ireland - if we were to get the whole world as an estate, and the Country of the Young along with it.

In the whole course of our work at the theatre we have been, I may say, drenched with advice by friendly people who for years gave us the reasons why we did not succeed... All their advice, or at least some of it, might have been good if we had wanted to make money, to make a common place of amusement.

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

In writing a little tragedy, 'The Gaol Gate,' I made the scenario in three lines, 'He is an informer; he is dead; he is hanged.' I wrote that play very quickly.

I don't know in the world why anyone would consent to be a king, and never to be left to himself, but to be worried and wearied and interfered with from dark to daybreak and from morning to the fall of night.

If the past year were offered me again, And choice of good and ill before me set Would I accept the pleasure with the pain Or dare to wish that we had never met?

There's more learning than is taught in books.