...the law-giver is wholly unpopular, and is perpetually passing wholly unpopular laws. Intrigue has been substituted for government; and the public man cannot appeal to the public because all the most important part of his policy is conducted in private. The modern politician conducts his public life in private. He sometimes condescends to make up for it by affecting to conduct his private life in public. He will put his baby or his birthday book into the illustrated papers; it is his dealings with the colossal millions of the cosmopolitan millionaires that he puts in his pocket or his private safe. We are allowed to know all about his dogs and cats; but not about those larger and more dangerous animals, his bulls and bears.

-Irish Impressions (1919)

In logic a wise man will always put the cart before the horse. That is to say, he will always put the end before the means; when he is considering the question as a whole. He does not construct a cart in order to exercise a horse. He employs a horse to draw a cart, and whatever is in the cart. In all modern reasoning there is a tendency to make the mere political beast of burden more important than the chariot of man it is meant to draw.

-Irish Impressions (1919)

Progress is superiority to oneself, and it is stopped dead by superiority to others.

-Irish Impressions (1919)

Imperialism is not an insanity of patriotism; it is merely an illusion of cosmopolitanism.

-Irish Impressions (1919)

Nor, for that matter, do I know why [...] the parliamentary enclosure at Westminster is also connected with the first of the martyrs; unless it be because St. Stephen was killed with stones. The stones piled together to make modern political buildings, might perhaps be regarded as a cairn, or heap of missiles, marking the place of the murder of a witness to the truth

-Irish Impressions (1919)

Fashions

...a fashion is a custom without a cause. A fashion is a custom to which men cannot get accustomed; simply because it is without a cause. That is why our industrial societies, touching every topic from the cosmos to the coat-collars, are merely swept by a succession of modes which are merely moods. They are customs that fail to be customary.

-Irish Impressions (1919)

"Knowing nine hundred words is not always more important than knowing what some of them mean."

Knowing nine hundred words is not always more important than knowing what some of them mean.

-Irish Impressions (1919)

"Coincidences are spiritual puns"

[OK, the title of this post is not the exact quote, but since that seems to be how it is usually quoted, I put it in the title. The actual quote is found below.]

All literary style, especially national style, is made up of such coincidences; which are a spiritual sort of puns. That is why style is untranslatable; because it is possible to render the meaning, but not the double meaning.

-Irish Impressions (1919)

"It is taking them without gratitude; that is, emphatically as not granted."

I have often done the little I could to correct the stale trick of taking things for granted: all the more because it is not even taking them for granted. It is taking them without gratitude; that is, emphatically as not granted. Even one's own front door, released by one's own latchkey, should not only open inward on things familiar, but outward on things unknown. Even one's own domestic fireside should be wild as well as domesticated; for nothing could be wilder than fire.

-Irish Impressions (1919)