George William Russell Quotes

You cannot evoke great spirits and eat plums at the same time.

Any relations in a social order will endure if there is infused into them some of that spirit of human sympathy, which qualifies life for immortality.

We may fight against what is wrong, but if we allow ourselves to hate, that is to insure our spiritual defeat and our likeness to what we hate.

In ancient shadows and twilightsWhere childhood had strayed,The world's great sorrows were bornAnd its heroes were made.In the lost boyhood of JudasChrist was betrayed.

Forgive me, Spirit of my spirit, for this, that I have found it easier to read the mystery told in tears and understood Thee better in sorrow than in joy.

Seek on earth what you have found in heaven.

Ah, to think how thin the veil that lies Between the pain of hell and Paradise.

In the lost boyhood of Judas, Christ was betrayed.

There is a law in human nature which draws us to like what we passionately condemn.

Reason, alas, does not remove mountains. It only tries to walk around them, and see what is on the other side.

A literary movement: five or six people who live in the same town and hate each other.

Twilight, a timid, fawn, went glimmering by, and Night, the dark-blue hunter, followed fast.

We must pass like smoke or live within the spirit's fire; For we can no more than smoke unto the flame return If our thought has changed to dream, our will unto desire, As smoke we vanish though the fire may burn.

After the spiritual powers, there is no thing in the world more unconquerable than the spirit of nationality. ... The spirit of nationality in Ireland will persist even though the mightiest of material powers be its neighbor.

We are tired who follow after fantasy and truth that flies: You with only look and laughter stain our hearts with richest dyes.

Whiskey: a torchligh procession marching down your throat.

No leader, however great a personality he may be, is as important to a people as their own intellectual development.

When steam first began to pump and wheels go round at so many revolutions per minute, what are called business habits were intended to make the life of man run in harmony with the steam engine, and his movement rival the train in punctuality.

A young man who had been troubling society with impalpable doctrines of a new civilization which he called "the Kingdom of Heaven" had been put out of the way; and I can imagine that believer in material power murmuring as he went homeward, "it will all blow over now." Yes. The wind from the Kingdom of Heaven has blown over the world, and shall blow for centuries yet.

People tell me that the countryside must always be stupid and backward, and I get angry, as if it were said that only townspeople had immortal souls, and that it was only in the city that the flame of divinity breathed into the first men had an unobscured glow.