History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave, But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice… — Seamus Heaney Copy Share Image
“Human beings suffer, They torture one another, They get hurt and get hard. No poem or play or song Can fully right… — Seamus Heaney Copy Share Image
So hope for a great sea-change On the far side of revenge. Believe that further shore Is reachable from here. Believe in… — Seamus Heaney Copy Share Image
Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth… — Seamus Heaney Copy Share Image
“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… — Seamus Heaney Copy Share Image
“That was their way, their heathenish hope; deep in their hearts they remembered hell.” — Seamus Heaney Copy Share Image
Even if the hopes you started out with are dashed, hope has to be maintained. — Seamus Heaney Copy Share Image
I have always thought of poems as stepping stones in one's own sense of oneself. Every now and again, you write a… — Seamus Heaney Copy Share Image
You had to come back to learn how to lose yourself, to be pilot and stray-witch, Hansel and Gretel in one. — Seamus Heaney Copy Share Image
If self is a location, so is love: Bearings taken, markings, cardinal points, Options, obstinacies, dug heels, and distance, Here and there and now… — Seamus Heaney Copy Share Image
I'm very conscious that people dear to me are alive in my imagination - poets in particular. — Seamus Heaney Copy Share Image
Once I was on the job, once I had got started, I felt safe enough, but the anticipation made me tense. — Seamus Heaney Copy Share Image
You can have Irish identity in the north and also have your Irish passport. — Seamus Heaney Copy Share Image
The external reality and inner dynamic of happenings in Northern Ireland between 1968 and 1974 were symptomatic of change, violent change admittedly, but change… — Seamus Heaney Copy Share Image
Hope for a great sea-change timid to rebuke and too petty to forgive — Seamus Heaney Copy Share Image
One of the very first poems I wrote was Docker That fist would drop a hammer on a Catholic and one of the sturdiest… — Seamus Heaney Copy Share Image
Anything Can Happen is also, incidentally, a poem that arose from teaching. I'd talked about the Horace Ode (I, 34) [on which the poem… — Seamus Heaney Copy Share Image
Poetry is always slightly mysterious, and you wonder what is your relationship to it. — Seamus Heaney Copy Share Image
Sink every impulse like a bolt. Secure The bastion of sensation. Do not waver Into language. Do not waver in it. — Seamus Heaney Copy Share Image
