The absence of the heavy boot of Europe has preserved to these people the agile walk of the wild animal, while the general simplicity of their lives has given them many other points of physical perfection.
It is the timber of poetry that wears most surely, and there is no timber that has not strong roots among the clay and worms.
Every article on these islands has an almost personal character, which gives this simple life, where all art is unknown, something of the artistic beauty of medieval life.
There is no language like the Irish for soothing and quieting.
Of the things which nourish the imagination, humour is one of the most needful, and it is dangerous to limit or destroy it.
The grief of the keen is no personal complaint for the death of one woman over eighty years, but seems to contain the whole passionate rage that lurks somewhere in every native of the island.