That toil of growing up; The ignominy of boyhood; the distress Of boyhood changing into man; The unfinished man and his pain.

I have found nothing half so good / As my long-planned half solitude, / Where I can sit up half the night / With some friend that has the wit.

Sometimes my feet are tired and my hands are quiet, but there is no quiet in my heart.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

Life moves out of a red flare of dreams Into a common light of common hours, Until old age brings the red flare again.

Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.

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.