"Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for."
"One of the very first poems I wrote was Docker That fist would drop a hammer on a Catholic and one of the sturdiest was Requiem for the Croppies, written 50 years after 1916 [the year of the Easter Rising]. Being responsible and what it means, what it demands, have indeed preoccupied me maybe too much. But this is it, this is the thing, this is what you're up against."
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Source: Source: harvardmagazine.com
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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."