How can the arts overcome the slow dying of men's hearts that we call progress ?

I have desired, like every artist, to create a little world out of the beautiful, pleasant, and significant things of this marred and clumsy world, and to show in a vision something of the face of Ireland to any of my own people who would look where I bid them. I have therefore written down accurately and candidly much that I have heard and seen, and, except by way of commentary, nothing that I have merely imagined.

Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye, In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky With all their ancient faces like rain- beaten stones, And all their helms of silver hovering.

I think it better that in times like these a poet's mouth be silent, for in truth we have no gift to set a statesman right.

I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.

I have grown to believe that there is no dangerous idea, which does not become less dangerous when written out in sincere and careful English.

It seems that I must bid the Muse to pack, / Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend / Until imagination, ear and eye, / Can be content with argument and deal / In abstract things; or be derided by / A sort of battered kettle at the heel.