Seamus O'grady Quotes & Sayings

My point is there's a hidden Scotland in anyone who speaks the Northern Ireland speech. It's a terrific complicating factor, not just in Northern Ireland, but Ireland generally. — Seamus Heaney

And a young prince must be prudent like that,
giving freely while his father lives
so that afterwards, in age when fighting starts
steadfast companions will stand by him
and hold the line. — Seamus Heaney

Desmond O'Grady is one of the senior figures in Irish
Literary life, exemplary in the way he has committed
himself over the decades to the vocation of poetry and
has lived selflessly for the art — Seamus Heaney

I composed habits for those acres
so that my last look would be
neither gluttonous nor starved.
I was ready to go anywhere. — Seamus Heaney

I think about all the people who have created something that lives after them - works of art, plays, music, films, literature, poetry that will be read, seen, performed, and heard for the rest of time. If I could do something that lives after me, then I think I will have had a life well led. — Seamus Dever

documents, he placed them in a stiffened — Seamus O'Griffin

I might enjoy being an albatross, being able to glide for days and daydream for hundreds of miles along the thermals. And then being able to hang like an affliction round some people's necks. — Seamus Heaney

A public expectation, it has to be said, not of poetry as such but of political positions variously approvable by mutually disapproving groups. — Seamus Heaney

Anger and desire for revenge can be a great motivating force. It's either that or you allow it to affect your confidence and that can be crippling. — Seamus Dever

A four foot box, a foot for every year. — Seamus Heaney

Without needing to be theoretically instructed, consciousness quickly realizes that it is the site of variously contending discourses. — Seamus Heaney

Then I thought of the tribe whose dances never fail / For they keep dancing till they sight the deer. — Seamus Heaney

The poet is on the side of undeceiving the world. — Seamus Heaney

The fact of the matter is that the most unexpected and miraculous thing in my life was the arrival in it of poetry itself - as a vocation and an elevation almost. — Seamus Heaney

So whether he calls it spirit music or not, I don't care. He took it out of wind off mid-Atlantic. — Seamus Heaney

And of course there was Seamus, who could now come to work with me on most days. He had a bed and toys in one corner near my desk, although he preferred curling up in the guest chairs directly across from me, as though he had an appointment and urgent matters to howl about. (More fookin' food! Seriously, people. I need more foooooooooooood!!) — Teresa Rhyne

Love brought me that far by the hand, without The slightest doubt or irony, dry-eyed And knowledgeable, contrary as be damned; Then just kept standing there, not letting go. — Seamus Heaney

I suppose you inevitably fall into habits of expression. — Seamus Heaney

It is difficult at times to repress the thought that history is about as instructive as an abattoir; that Tacitus was right and that peace is merely the desolation left behind after the decisive operations of merciless power. — Seamus Heaney

It reminded him of his Uncle Seamus, the notorious and poetic drunk, who would sit down at the breakfast table the morning after a bender, drain a bottle of stout and say 'Ah, the chill of consciousness returns — Molly O'Neill

There is nothing like being on stage. — Seamus Dever

I've been in the habit of helping people. — Seamus Heaney

What is the difference, Potter, between monkshood and wolfsbane?"
At this, Hermione stood up, her hand stretching towards the dungeon ceiling.
I don't know," said Harry quietly. "I think Hermione does, though, why don't you try asking her?"
A few people laughed; Harry caught sight of Seamus's eye and Seamus winked. Snape, however, was not pleased.
Sit down," he snapped at Hermione. "For your information, Potter, asphodel and wormwood make a sleeping potion so powerful it is known as the Draught of Living Death. A bezoar is a stone taken from the stomach of a goat and it will save you from most poisons. As for monkshood and wolfsbane, they are the same plant, which also goes by the name of aconite. Well? Why aren't you all copying that down?"
There was a sudden rummaging for quills and parchment. Over the noise, Snape said, "And a point will be taken from Gryffindor house for your cheek, Potter. — J.K. Rowling

Fate goes ever as fate must. — Seamus Heaney

If you just did what you wanted to do, and didn't care what anyone thought, you'd be Autistic. — Seamus McDuff

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

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells. — Seamus Heaney

My body was braille for the creeping influences. — Seamus Heaney

The form of the poem, in other words, is crucial to poetry's power to do the thing which always is and always will be to poetry's credit: the power to persuade that vulnerable part of our consciousness of its rightness in spite of the evidence of wrongness all around it, the power to remind us that we are hunters and gatherers of values, that our very solitudes and distresses are creditable, in so far as they, too, are an earnest of our veritable human being. — Seamus Heaney

Seamus walked a direct line to Frank and handed him the gun, backwards, with the barrel open. — Amy Vansant

You had to come back to learn how to lose yourself, to be pilot and stray-witch, Hansel and Gretel in one. — Seamus Heaney

The aim of poetry and the poet is finally to be of service, to ply the effort of the individual into the larger work of the community as a whole. — Seamus Heaney

Seamus can't be the king to my queen. Because he's a saint. And no one measures up to a saint. — Kim Holden

The diamond absolutes.
I am neither internee nor informer;
An inner emigre, grown long-haired
And thoughtful; a wood-kerne
Escaped from the massacre,
Taking protective colouring
From bole and bark, feeling
Every wind that blows;
Who, blowing up these sparks
For their meagre heat, have missed
The once-in-a-lifetime portent,
The comet's pulsing tose. — Seamus Heaney

The kinds of truth that art gives us many, many times are small truths. They don't have the resonance of an encyclical from the Pope stating an eternal truth, but they partake of the quality of eternity. There is a sort of timeless delight in them. — Seamus Heaney

Poetry is more a threshold than a path. — Seamus Heaney