Because I helped to wind the clock, I come to hear it strike.

Was it for this the wild geese spread The gray wing upon every tide; For this that all that blood was shed, For this. Edward Fitzgerald died, And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone, All that delirium of the brave? Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Everything exists, everything is true and the earth is just a bit of dust beneath our feet.

A man in his own secret meditation / Is lost amid the labyrinth that he has made / In art or politics.

I would have touched it like a child But knew my finger could but have touched Cold stone and water. I grew wild, Even accusing heaven because It had set down among its laws: Nothing that we love over-much Is ponderable to our touch.

It was my first meeting with a philosophy that confirmed my vague speculations and seemed at once logical and boundless.

What man does not understand, he fears; and what he fears, he tends to destroy.