Seamus Heaney Quotes That Will Inspire You to Live Your Best Life

1. Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun. Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966-1996

2. 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

3. 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.

4. I rhymeTo see myself, to set the darkness echoing. Death of a Naturalist

5. If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way. Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney

6. Is there life before death? That’s chalked upIn Ballymurphy. Competence with pain,Coherent miseries, a bite and a sup,We hug our little destiny again. North

7. 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. Beowulf

8. PostscriptAnd some time make the time to drive out westInto County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,In September or October, when the windAnd the light are working off each otherSo that the ocean on one side is wildWith foam and glitter, and inland among stonesThe surface of a slate-grey lake is litBy the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,Their fully grown headstrong-looking headsTucked or cresting or busy underwater.Useless to think you’ll park and capture itMore thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,A hurry through which known and strange things passAs big soft buffetings come at the car sidewaysAnd catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

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

10. That was their way, their heathenish hope; deep in their hearts they remembered hell. Beowulf

11. The way we are living,timorous or bold,will have been our life.

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