Seamus Heaney Quotes

Quotes about:

• Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for.

  Seamus Heaney

  Optimism, Conviction, Wells

  87 Copy quote

• If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way.

  Seamus Heaney

  Way, Chance, Ifs

  68 Copy quote

• Believe that a further shore
  is reachable from here.

  Seamus Heaney

  Believe, I Forgive You, Shore

  "Doubletake". Poem by Seamus Heaney, 1990.

  78 Copy quote

• I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.

  Seamus Heaney

  Thinking, People, Understanding

  72 Copy quote

• No bit of the natural world is more valuable or more vulnerable than the tree bit. Nothing is more like ourselves, standing upright, caught between heaven and earth, frail at the extremities, yet strong at the central trunk, and nothing is closer to us at the beginning and at the end, providing the timber boards that frame both the cradle and the coffin.

  Seamus Heaney

  Strong, Tree, Heaven

  25 Copy quote

• Walk on air against your better judgement.

  Seamus Heaney

  Wisdom, Air, Judgement

  Seamus Heaney (2014). “Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966-1996”, p.417, Macmillan

  26 Copy quote

• History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave, But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme

  Seamus Heaney

  Justice, Once In A Lifetime, Sides

  "Doubletake" l. 13 (1990)

  65 Copy quote

• Even if the hopes you started out with are dashed, hope has to be maintained.

  Seamus Heaney

  Hope, Ifs

  76 Copy quote

• If poetry and the arts do anything, they can fortify your inner life, your inwardness.

  Seamus Heaney

  Art, Inner Life, Ifs

  5 Copy quote

• Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's done.

  Seamus Heaney

  Epic Poems, Two, Mind

  Seamus Heaney (2009). “Beowulf”, p.30, Faber & Faber

  74 Copy quote

• The end of art is peace.

  Seamus Heaney

  Art, Ends, Art Is

  Seamus Heaney (2014). “Preoccupations: Selected Prose, 1968-1978”, p.112, Macmillan

  41 Copy quote

• I have begun to think of life as a series of ripples widening out from an original center.

  Seamus Heaney

  Thinking, Ripple, Originals

  48 Copy quote

• Even if the last move did not succeed, the inner command says move again.

  Seamus Heaney

  Moving, Lasts, Succeed

  36 Copy quote

• Memory has always been fundamental for me. In fact, remembering what I had forgotten is the way most of the poems get started.

  Seamus Heaney

  Memories, Fundamentals, Way

  24 Copy quote

• Getting started, keeping going, getting started again - in art and in life, it seems to me this is the essential rhythm not only of achievement but of survival, the ground of convinced
  action, the basis of self-esteem and the guarantee of credibility in your lives, credibility to yourselves as well as to others.

  Seamus Heaney

  Art, Self Esteem, Achievement

  7 Copy quote

• I drink to keep body and soul apart.

  Seamus Heaney

  Soul, Body, Drink

  45 Copy quote

• The way we are living, timorous or bold, will have been our life.

  Seamus Heaney

  Way, Has Beens, Our Lives

  Seamus Heaney (2014). “Field Work: Poems”, p.23, Macmillan

  39 Copy quote

• Poetry is language in orbit.

  Seamus Heaney

  Art, Poetry, Orbit

  Seamus Heaney (2010). “Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971 - 2001”, p.366, Faber & Faber

  7 Copy quote

• Not to Learn Irish is to miss the opportunity of understanding what life in this country has meant and could mean in a better future. It is to cut oneself off from ways of being at home. If we regard self-understanding, mutual understanding, imaginative enhancement, cultural diversity and a tolerant political atmosphereas a desirable attainments, we should remember that a knowledge of the Irish language is an essential element in their realisation.

  Seamus Heaney

  Country, Mean, Home

  41 Copy quote

• Suspect too much sweet talk but never close your mind.

  Seamus Heaney

  Sweet, Nymphs, Mind

  Seamus Heaney (2010). “Opened Ground”, Faber & Faber

  21 Copy quote

• Poetry is always slightly mysterious, and you wonder what is your relationship to it.

  Seamus Heaney

  Mysterious, Wonder, Poetry Is

  52 Copy quote

• I have always thought of poems as stepping stones in one's own sense of oneself. Every now and again, you write a poem that gives you self-respect and steadies your going a little bit farther out in the stream. At the same time, you have to conjure the next stepping stone because the stream, we hope, keeps flowing.

  Seamus Heaney

  Writing, Self, Giving

  "In their own words: literary giants who died this year" by Jess Sutcliffe, www.theguardian.com. December 28, 2013.

  9 Copy quote

• If self is a location, so is love: Bearings taken, markings, cardinal points, Options, obstinacies, dug heels, and distance, Here and there and now and then, a stance.

  Seamus Heaney

  Distance, Taken, Self

  12 Copy quote

• Im a firm believer in learning by heart.

  Seamus Heaney

  Heart, Firm, Believer

  5 Copy quote

• Debate doesn’t really change things. It gets you bogged in deeper. If you can address or reopen the subject with something new, something from a different angle, then there is some hope. ... People are suddenly gazing at something else and pausing for a moment. And for the duration of that gaze and pause, they are like reflectors of the totality of their own knowledge and/or ignorance. That’s something poetry can do for you, it can entrance you for a moment above the pool of your own consciousness and your own possibilities.

  Seamus Heaney

  Ignorance, People, Different

  11 Copy quote

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