Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labour of its unfamiliar thought.

Is it not certain that the Creator yawns in earthquake and thunder and other popular displays, but toils in rounding the delicate spiral of a shell? -Yeats, The Trembling of the Veil

Even when the poet seems most himself . . . he is never the bundle of accident and incoherence that sits down to breakfast; he has been reborn as an idea, something intended, complete.

Players and painted stage took all my love, And not those things that they were emblems of.

We are no petty people. We are one of the great stocks of Burke; we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of Parnell. We have created most of the modern literature of this country. We have created the best of its political intelligence.

And many a poor man that has roved Loved and thought himself beloved From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.

Some burn damp faggots, others may consume The entire combustible world in one small room.