Seamus Heaney > Quotes

“Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

The innocent in gaols
Beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
Stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
Faints at the funeral home.

History says, don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

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

Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.”
― Seamus Heaney

“It is always better
to avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning.
For every one of us, living in this world
means waiting for our end. Let whoever can
win glory before death. When a warrior is gone,
that will be his best and only bulwark.”
― Seamus Heaney, Beowulf: A New Verse Translation

“Walk on air against your better judgement.”
― Seamus Heaney

“If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way.”
― Seamus Heaney

“If self is a location, so is love:
Bearings taken, markings, cardinal points,
Options, obstinacies, dug heels, and distance,
Here and there and now and then, a stance.”
― Seamus Heaney

“Now it’s high watermark
and floodtide in the heart
and time to go.
The sea-nymphs in the spray
will be the chorus now.
What’s left to say?

Suspect too much sweet-talk
but never close your mind.
It was a fortunate wind
that blew me here. I leave
half-ready to believe
that a crippled trust might walk

and the half-true rhyme is love.”
― Seamus Heaney, The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles' Philoctetes

“I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.”
― Seamus Heaney

“History says, Don’t hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme”
― Seamus Heaney

“Behaviour that's admired
is the path to power among people everywhere.”
― Seamus Heaney, Beowulf: A New Verse Translation

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

“The end of art is peace.”
― Seamus Heaney

“Sink every impulse like a bolt. Secure
The bastion of sensation. Do not waver
Into language. Do not waver in it.”
― Seamus Heaney

“I suppose I'm saying that defiance is actually part of the lyric job”
― Seamus Heaney

“All I know is a door into the dark”
― Seamus Heaney

“Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's done.”
― Seamus Heaney, Beowulf: A New Verse Translation

“The dotted line my father's ashplant made
On Sandymount Strand
Is something else the tide won't wash away.”
― Seamus Heaney

“Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

-Blackberry picking”
― 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, Crediting Poetry

“In off the moors, down through the mist beams, god-cursed Grendel came greedily loping.”
― Seamus Heaney, Beowulf

“History says, Don't hope/On this side of the grave/But then, once in a lifetime/The longest-for tidal wave of justice can rise up/And hope and history rhyme./So hope for a great sea change/On the far side of revenge/Believe in miracles....”
― Seamus Heaney

“To work, her dumb lunge says,
is to move a certain mass
...through a certain distance,
is to pull your weight and feel
exact and equal to it.
Feel dragged upon. And buoyant.”
― Seamus Heaney, Station Island