"Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for."
"No bit of the natural world is more valuable or more vulnerable than the tree bit. Nothing is more like ourselves, standing upright, caught between heaven and earth, frail at the extremities, yet strong at the central trunk, and nothing is closer to us at the beginning and at the end, providing the timber boards that frame both the cradle and the coffin."
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Source: Doubletake. Poem by Seamus Heaney, 1990.
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"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."