I was told in many places of Osgar's bravery and Goll's strength and Conan's bitter tongue, and the arguments of Oisin and Patrick. And I have often been given the story of Oisin's journey to Tir-nan-Og, the Country of the Young, that is, as I am told, a fine place and everything that is good is in it.

What are prophecies? Don't we hear them every day of the week? And if one comes true there may be seven blind and come to nothing.

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

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.

Every trick is an old one, but with a change of players, a change of dress, it comes out as new as before.

It's a grand thing to be able to take your money in your hand and to think no more of it when it slips away from you than you would a trout that would slip back into the stream.

I'll take no charity! What I get I'll earn by taking it. I would feel no pleasure it being given to me, any more than a huntsman would take pleasure being made a present of a dead fox, in place of getting a run across country after it.