Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice?

All the great masters have understood that there cannot be great art without the little limited life of the fable, which is always better the simpler it is, and the rich, far-wandering, many-imaged life of the half-seen world beyond it

Irish poets, learn your trade, sing whatever is well made, scorn the sort now growing up all out of shape from toe to top.

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.

Style, personality - deliberately adopted and therefore a mask - is the only escape from the hot-faced bargainers and money-changers.

I whispered, 'I am too young,' and then, 'I am old enough'; wherefore I threw a penny to find out if I might love.

Now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?