Quotes from Patrick Kavanagh

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

There is something wrong with a work of art if it can be understood by a policeman.

How strange a thing like that happens to a man. He dabbles in something and does not realise that it is his life.

What appears in newspapers is often new but seldom true.

Life in cities is not a spring but a river, or rather, a water main. It progresses like a novel, artificially.

We are not alone in our loneliness, others have been here and known griefs we thought our special own.

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

Patrick Maguire, the old peasant, can neither be damned nor glorified:The graveyard in which he will lie will be just a deep-drilled potato-fieldWhere the seed gets no chance to come throughTo the fun of the sun.The tongue in his mouth is the root of a yew.

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

My advice is this, do whatever pleases yourself. These things don't matter. What does matter is that if you have anything worth while in you, any talent, you should deliver it. Nothing must turn you from that.

It often occurs to me that we love most what makes us miserable. In my opinion, the damned are damned because they enjoy being damned.

We have tested and tasted too much, lover- Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.

He was in his secret room in the heart now. Having entered he could be bold. A man hasn't to be on his best behavior in Heaven; he can kick the furniture around. He can stoop down and picks up lumps of mortality without being born again to die.

My chin is weak. I find it hard to make decisions. For years I had been caught between the two stools of security on the land and rich-scented life on the exotic islands of literature. I wasn't really a writer. I had seen a strange beautiful light on the hills and that was all.

Among your earthiest words, the angels stray...

A man innocently dabbles in words and rhymes and finds that it is his life

He read me Whitman, of whom he was very fond, and also Emerson. I didn't like Whitman, and said so. I always thought him a writer who tried to bully his way to prophecy. Of Emerson at the time I had no opinions to offer. I found him out later to be a sugary humbug. His transcendental bunkum sickened me.

Life was too heavy on her feet in that place to leap dramatically when something apparently exciting happened.

Death was in the atmosphere. Only the yellow weeds in the meadow were excited by living.

The sun rose and set in a land of dreams whether the clocks where right or wrong.

I find a star-lovely art In a dark sod. Joy that is timeless! O heart That knows God!

He was pleasantly hysterical like a young girl at a wedding.

Parochialism and provincialism are direct opposites. A provincial is always trying to live by other people's loves, but a parochial is self-sufficient.

Gather No moss you rolling stones. Nothing thought out atones For no flight In the light.