Patrick Kavanagh

“A poet is never one of the people. He is detached, remote, and the life of small-time dances and talk about football would not be for him. He is a divine idiot, a sublime fool.”

“Clay is the word and clay is the flesh Where the potato-gatherers like mechanized scarecrows move.”

“The big important secret of literature is to have something to say.”

“We have tested and tasted too much, lover- Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.”

“He knew that posterity has no use for anything but the soul, The lines that speak the language of the spirit.”

“Leafy-with-love banks and the green waters of the canal pouring redemption for me.”

“To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel that discernment is but a hand playing with finely-tuned strings.”

“O stony grey soil of Monaghan, The laugh from my love you thieved.”

“Naming these things is the love-act and the pledge.”

“O commemorate me where there is water, Canal water preferably, so stilly Greeny at the heart of summer.”

“Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot.”

“Gods are born of stucco and plaster.”

“A man who is simply a poet is a sad thing.”