Quotes by Patrick Kavanagh

“It is impossible to read the daily press without being diverted from reality. You are full of enthusiasm for the eternal verities -- life is worth living, and then out of sinful curiosity you open a newspaper. You are disillusioned and wrecked.”

“A man is original when he speaks the truth that has always been known to all good men.”

“Malice is only another name for mediocrity.”

“To know fully even one field or one land is a lifetimes experience. In the world of poetic experience it is depth that counts, not width. A gap in a hedge, a smooth rock surfacing a narrow lane, a view of a woody meadow, the stream at the junction of four small fields - these are as much as a man can fully experience.”

“A sweeping statement is the only statement worth listening to. The critic without faith gives balanced opinions, usually about second-rate writers.”

Natural life, lived naturally as it is lived in the countryside, has none of that progress which is the base of happiness. Men and women in rural communities can be compared to a spring that rises out of a rock and spreads in irregular ever-widening circles. But the general principle is static.

The position is: the Gaelic language is no longer the native language; it is dead, yet food is being brought to the graveyard.