Quotes by Seamus Heaney

“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.”

“Dont be surprised if I demur, for, be advised my passports green. No glass of ours was ever raised to toast The Queen.”

“But the thing uttered by the speaker I strain towards is still not quite the story of what is going on; it is more reflexive than that, because as a poet I am in fact straining towards a strain, seeking repose in the stability conferred by a musically satisfying order of sounds.”

“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.”

“No place in the world prides itself more on its vigilance and realism, no place considers itself more qualified to censure any flourish of rhetoric or extravagance of aspiration.”

“As writers and readers, as sinners and citizens, our realism and our aesthetic sense make us wary of crediting the positive note.”

“The next move is always the test.”

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

“I may have grown more attentive to the news and more alive to the world history and world-sorrow behind it.”

“But that citizens perception was also at one with the truth in recognizing that the very brutality of the means by which the IRA were pursuing change was destructive of the trust upon which new possibilities would have to be based.”

It is always betterto avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning.For every one of us, living in this worldmeans waiting for our end. Let whoever canwin glory before death. When a warrior is gone,that will be his best and only bulwark.

History says, Don’t hopeOn this side of the grave,But then, once in a lifetimeThe longed-for tidal waveOf justice can rise up,And hope and history rhyme

If you have the words, theres always a chance that youll find the way.

All I know is a door into the dark

I cant think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change peoples understanding of whats going on in the world.

I rhymeTo see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

There is risk and truth to yourselves and the world before you.

Since when, he asked,Are the first line and last line of any poemWhere the poem begins and ends?

I suppose Im saying that defiance is actually part of the lyric job

He sits, strong and blunt as a Celtic cross, Clearly used to silence and an armchair: Tonight the wife and children will be quiet At slammed door and smokers cough in the hall.