Irish poet and playwright
The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.
The mark of all good art is not that the thing done is done exactly or finely, for machinery may do as much, but that it is worked out with the head and the workman's heart.
The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.
The spirit of an age may be best expressed in the abstract ideal arts, for the spirit itself is abstract and ideal.
No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.
Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.
Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.