When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious.

The groves of Blarney They look so charming Down by the purling Of sweet, silent brooks.

Any good history begins in strangeness. The past should not be comfortable. The past should not a familar echo of the present, for if it is familar why revist it? The past should be so strange that you wonder how you and people you know and love could come from such a time.

Out of Ireland have we come.
Great hatred, little room,
Maimed us at the start.
I carry from my mother's womb
A fanatic heart.

We . . . are no petty people. We are one of the great stocks of Burke; we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of Parnell. We have created most of the modern literature of this country. We have created the best of its political intelligence.

If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society would be quite civilized.