“That's how vile i am! I live Ireland, I breathe Ireland, and Christ how I loathe it, I wish I were a bloody Scot, that's how bloody awful it is being Irish!”

“I am looking out of my window in an anxious and resentful state of mind, oblivious to my surroundings, brooding perhaps on some damage done to my prestige. Then suddenly I observe a hovering kestrel. In a moment everything is altered. The brooding self with its hurt vanity has disappeared. There is nothing now but kestrel. And when I return to thinking of the other matter it seems less important”

“Every man needs two women: a quiet home-maker, and a thrilling nymph.”

“There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship.”

“Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.”

“All art is a struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous.”

“In almost every marriage there is a selfish and an unselfish partner. A pattern is set up and soon becomes inflexible, of one person always making the demands and one person always giving way.”

“One doesn't have to get anywhere in a marriage. It's not a public conveyance.”

“The priesthood is a marriage. People often start by falling in love, and they go on for years without realizing that love must change into some other love which is so unlike it that it can hardly be recognized as love at all.”

“We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.”

“Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary and everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self.”