"Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for."
"I have always thought of poems as stepping stones in one's own sense of oneself. Every now and again, you write a poem that gives you self-respect and steadies your going a little bit farther out in the stream. At the same time, you have to conjure the next stepping stone because the stream, we hope, keeps flowing."
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More quotes by Seamus Heaney
"Believe that a further shore is reachable from here."
"Even if the hopes you started out with are dashed, hope has to be maintained."
"Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's done."
"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."
"If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way."