R.E. Butler Quotes
Popular sovereignty has to be given by a people to itself, and this is the important meaning of self-determination.
As this world was not intended to be a state of any great satisfaction or high enjoyment, so neither was it intended to be a mere scene of unhappiness and sorrow.
The dead should be judged like criminals, impartially, but they should be allowed the benefit of the doubt.
We need to be I think equally sensitive to the injurious power of certain kinds of speech acts but also to the subversive and possibly liberatory effects of certain kinds of play.
Christ was only crucified once and for a few hours. Think of the hundreds of thousands whom Christ has been crucifying in a quiet way ever since.
In old times people used to try and square the circle; now they try and devise schemes for satisfying the Irish nation.
He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most. God will take care that we do not enjoy it any more than is good for us.
The desire that is satisfied is not a great desire, nor has the shoulder used all its might that an unbreakable gate has never strained.
The true faith discovered was When painted panel, statuary, Glass-mosaic, window-glass, Amended what was told awry By some peasant gospeler.
Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.
Once you grow past Mommy and Daddy coming running when you're hurt, you're really on your own. You're alone, and there's no one to help you.
The violence of language consists in its effort to capture the ineffable and, hence, to destroy it, to seize hold of that which must remain elusive for language to operate as a living thing.
I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.
Marriage is distinctly and repeatedly excluded from heaven. Is this because it is thought likely to mar the general felicity?
I wasn't trying to work out my own ancestry. I was trying to get people to feel slavery. I was trying to get across the kind of emotional and psychological stones that slavery threw at people.
Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
I think it better that in times like these a poet's mouth be silent, for in truth we have no gift to set a statesman right.
To be born woman is to know - although they do not speak of it at school - women must labor to be beautiful.
Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better.
Mr. Tennyson has said that more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, but he wisely refrains from saying whether they are good or bad things.
Businesses planned for service are apt to succeed businesses planned for profit are apt to fail.
Beware At war Or at peace, More people die Of unenlightened self-interest Than of any other disease
Irish poets, learn your trade, sing whatever is well made, scorn the sort now growing up all out of shape from toe to top.
...I realized that I knew less about loneliness than I had thought - and much less than I would know when he went away.
Positive obsession is about not being able to stop just because you're afraid and full of doubts. Positive obsession is dangerous. It's about not being able to stop at all.
No one was going to stop me from writing and no one had to really guide me towards science fiction. It was natural, really, that I would take that interest.
Fantasy is totally wide open; all you really have to do is follow the rules you've set. But if you're writing about science, you have to first learn what you're writing about.
Science fiction let me do both. It let me look into science and stick my nose in everywhere.
Nor dread nor hope attend a dying animal; a man awaits his end dreading and hoping all.
And by the way, I wanted to point out that Kindred is not science fiction. You'll note there's no science in it. It's a kind of grim fantasy.
But my problem with fantasy, and horror, and related genres, is that sometimes the problems are illogical.
I think all happiness depends on the energy to assume the mask of some other life, on a re-birth as something not one's self.
Time can but make it easier to be wise / Though now it seems impossible, and so / All that you need is patience.
Florence Farr once said to me, If we could say to ourselves, with sincerity, 'this passing moment is as good as any I shall ever know,' we could die upon the instant and be united with God.
I have grown to believe that there is no dangerous idea, which does not become less dangerous when written out in sincere and careful English.
His element is so fine Being sharpened by his death, To drink from the wine-breath While our gross palates drink from the whole wine.
An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick, unless soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing for every tatter in its mortal dress.
Out of Ireland have we come, great hatred, little room, maimed us at the start. I carry from my mother's womb a fanatic heart.
