Cessation of work is not accompanied by cessation of expenses.

Necessity of action takes away the fear of the act, and makes bold resolution the favorite of fortune.

I have crushed the cup of youth like a rose between my fingers but its nectar never warmed my weary heart.

The only sin is ugliness, and if we believed this with all our being, all other activities of the human spirit could be left to take care of themselves.

What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth.

It seems unpleasantly refined To put things off till someone knows.

Living at that pitch, on that edge, is something which many poets engage in to some extent.

I realize that humor isn’t for everyone. It’s only for people who want to have fun, enjoy life, and feel alive.

A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.

He that hath no cross deserves no crown.

I can imagine no society which does not embody some method of arbitration.

What I do deny is that you can build any enduring society without some such mystical ethos.

I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.

History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.

Your average pop song or film is a very sophisticated item, with very sophisticated ways of listening and viewing that we have not really consciously developed over the years – because we were having such...

There are so many ways to heal. Arrogance may have a place in technology, but not in healing. I need to get out of my own way if I am to heal.

My mind to me a kingdom is, such present joys therein I find, that it excels all other bliss.

There’s nothing that can help you understand your beliefs more than trying to explain them to an inquisitive child.

Nobody seriously believes in the social philosophies of the immediate past.

And bitter waxed the fray; Brother with brother spake no word When they met in the way.

Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part.

I certainly am interested in accessibility, clarity, and immediacy.

If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I’d pay for riding lessons and take his gun away.

The average person’s ear weighs what you are, not what you were.

Out there in the spotlight you’re a million miles away and every ounce of energy you try to give away as the sweat pours out your body like the music that you play.

The point I am making is that in the more primitive forms of society the individual is merely a unit; in more developed forms of society he is an independent personality.

I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute.

Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.

Obviously one of the things that poets from Northern Ireland and beyond – had to try to make sense of was what was happening on a day-to-day political level.