Things are because we see them, and what we see, and how we see it, depends on the Arts that influenced us. To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing. One does not see anything until one sees its beauty. Then, and then only, does it comes into existence.

I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die.

One's days were too brief to take the burden of another's errors on one's shoulders. Each man lived his own life and paid his own price for living it.

I am Irish by race but the English have condemned me to talk the language of Shakespeare.

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things.

To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability.