Our own acts are isolated and one act does not buy absolution for another.

I had still the ambition, formed in Sligo in my teens, of living in imitation of Thoreau on Innisfree, a little island in Lough Gill, and when walking through Fleet Street very homesick I heard a little tinkle of water and saw a fountain in a shop window which balanced a little ball upon its jet, and began to remember lake water. From the sudden remembrance came my poem Innisfree.

Accursed who brings to light of day the writings I have cast away.

No art can conquer the people alone-the people are conquered by an ideal of life upheld by authority.

It is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am of the opinion of the ancient Jewish book which says there is no wisdom without leisure.

Words alone are certain good.

While they danced they came over them the weariness with the world, the melancholy, the pity one for the other, which is the exultation of love.