Seamus Heaney was an acclaimed Irish poet and lecturer, also considered to be a remarkable playwright and translator. During his graduation on English Language and Literature in Belfast he came across Ted Hughes’s ‘Lupercal’ which inspired him to write poems. Heaney through a majority of his works praised the beauty of nature and this helped him gain great popularity in the United Kingdom. He also wrote persuasive poems on love and mythology. Many of his works are written as a memory of his upbringings in the rural area of North Ireland. He worked as a professor at Harvard and Oxford. He was honored with the ‘Nobel Prize for Literature’ in 1995 among various other awards. Read on the compilation of quotations and thoughts which have been curated from his books, poems, lectures, plays, dialogues and work. Go through these quotes and sayings by Seamus Heaney that highlight his wonderful way of imparting wisdom with the help of poetry.
History says, Don’t hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
Seamus Heaney
If self is a location, so is love:
Bearings taken, markings, cardinal points,
Options, obstinacies, dug heels, and distance,
Here and there and now and then, a stance.
So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.
And a young prince must be prudent like that,
giving freely while his father lives
so that afterwards, in age when fighting starts
steadfast companions will stand by him
and hold the line.
The main thing is to write for the joy of it. Cultivate a work-lust that imagines its haven like your hands at night dreaming the sun in the sunspot of a breast.
He sits, strong and blunt as a Celtic cross,
Clearly used to silence and an armchair:
Tonight the wife and children will be quiet
At slammed door and smoker's cough in the hall.
Since when," he asked,
"Are the first line and last line of any poem
Where the poem begins and ends?
Seamus Heaney
Whether it be a matter of personal relations within a marriage or political initiatives within a peace process, there is no sure-fire do-it-yourself kit.
Words...To lure the tribal shoals to epigram / And order.
Seamus Heaney
Is there life before death? That’s chalked up
In Ballymurphy. Competence with pain,
Coherent miseries, a bite and a sup,
We hug our little destiny again.
Love brought me that far by the hand, without The slightest doubt or irony, dry-eyed And knowledgeable, contrary as be damned; Then just kept standing there, not letting go.
Only the very stupid or the very deprived can any longer help knowing that the documents of civilization have been written in blood and tears, blood and tears no less real for being very remote.
Seamus Heaney
To work, her dumb lunge says,
is to move a certain mass
...through a certain distance,
is to pull your weight and feel
exact and equal to it.
Feel dragged upon. And buoyant.
Seamus Heaney
I cannot be weaned/Off the earth's long contour, her river-veins.
