The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.

The paradox of Reality is that no image is as compelling as the one which exists only in the mind's eye.

In a nation of celebrity worshipers, amid followers of the cult of personality, individual modesty becomes a heroic quality. I find heroism in the acceptance of anonymity, in the studied resistance to the normal American tropism toward the limelight.

Rumor and gossip, like sound itself, appear to travel by wave-effect, sheer preposterosity being no barrier.

Ireland is not at all a simple place, and in many ways it is spare and sad. It has no wealth, no power, no stability, no influence, no fashion, no size. Its only real arts are song and drama and poem. But Limerick alone has two thousand ruined castles and surely that many practicing poets.

When two people marry they become in the eyes of the law one person, and that one person is the husband.

The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.