The Crock of Gold quotes

The Grey Woman of Dun Gortin and the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath asked them the three questions which nobody had ever been able to answer, and they were able to answer them.

That was how they obtained the enmity of these two women which is more valuable than the friendship of angels.

The Grey Woman and the Thin Woman were so incensed at being answered that they married the two Philosophers in order to be able to pinch them in bed, but the skins of the Philosophers were so thick that they did not know they were …

In the centre of the pine wood called Coilla Doraca there lived not long ago two Philosophers.

They were wiser than anything else in the world except the Salmon who lies in the pool of Glyn Cagny into which the nuts of knowledge fall from the hazel bush on its bank.

He, of course, is the most profound of living creatures, but the two Philosophers are next to him in wisdom.

The first sight of the extraordinary blaze astonished him. He had never seen anything like it before, and the steady, unwinking glare aroused his fear and curiosity equally.

Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will; indeed, it has led many people into dangers which mere physical courage would shudder away from, for hunger and love and curiosity are the great impelling forces of life.

When the little boy found that the light did not move he drew closer to it, and at last, emboldened by curiosity, he stepped right into it and found that it was not a thing at all.

These were favourite maxims with them:

You must be fit to give before you can be fit to receive.

Knowledge becomes lumber in a week, therefore, get rid of it.

The box must be emptied before it can be refilled.

A sword, a spade, and a thought should never be allowed to rust.

The Grey Woman and the Thin Woman, however, held opinions quite contrary to these, and their maxims also were different:

A secret is a weapon and a friend.

Man is God’s secret, Power is man’s secret, Sex is woman’s secret.

By having much you are fitted to have more.

The art of packing is the last lecture of wisdom.

The scalp of your enemy is progress.

Holding these opposed views it seemed likely that visitors seeking for advice from the Philosophers might be astonished and captured by their wives;

“The toxin generates the antitoxin. The end lies concealed in the beginning. All bodies grow around a skeleton.

Life is a petticoat about death.

I will not go to bed.”

Not alone, therefore, was their righteous vengeance nullified, but the crock of gold which had taken their community many thousands of years to amass was stolen.

A Leprecaun without a pot of gold is like a rose without perfume, a bird without a wing, or an inside without an outside.

They considered that the Philosopher had treated them badly, that his action was mischievous and unneighbourly, and that until they were adequately compensated for their loss both of treasure and dignity, no conditions other than those of enmity could exist between their people and the …

He was not looking at her but far away sidewards across the spreading hill. His legs were crossed; they were shaggy and hoofed like the legs of a goat: but she would not look at these because of his wonderful, sad, grotesque face.

Gaiety is good to look upon and an innocent face is delightful to our souls, but no woman can resist sadness or weakness, and ugliness she dare not resist.

Her nature leaps to be the comforter. It is her reason. It exalts her to an ecstasy wherein nothing but the sacrifice of herself has any proportion.

“You must not do anything because it is right, but because it is your wish.

Right is a word and Wrong is a word, but the sun shines in the morning and the dew falls in the dusk without thinking of these words which have no meaning.

The bee flies to the flower and the seed goes abroad and is happy. Is that right, Shepherd Girl?—it is wrong also. I come to you because the bee goes to the flower—it is wrong!

Wisdom is the spirit and the wings of the spirit, Love is the shaggy beast that goes down. Gallantly he dives, below thought, beyond Wisdom, to rise again as high above these as he had first descended.

Wisdom is righteous and clean, but Love is unclean and holy.

I sing of the beast and the descent: the great unclean purging itself in fire: the thought that is not born in the measure or the ice or the head, but in the feet and the hot blood and the pulse of fury.

“So do I,” said Pan. “All good people like eating.

Every person who is hungry is a good person, and every person who is not hungry is a bad person. It is better to be hungry than rich.

”

“Why would you say that?” she replied. “One must find out all things, and when we find out a thing we know if it is good or bad.”

“That is the beginning of knowledge,” said Pan, “but it is not the beginning of wisdom.”

“What is the beginning of wisdom?”

Should not the labours of a healthy brain be equally subterranean and equally competent? Why have we to think aloud and travel laboriously from syllogism to ergo, chary of our conclusions and distrustful of our premises?

Thought, as we know it, is a disease and no more.

The healthy mentality should register its convictions and not its labours. Our ears should not hear the clamour of its doubts nor be forced to listen to the pro and con wherewith we are eternally badgered and perplexed.

… na Cloca Mora acted in the manner about to be recorded, they were not prompted by any lewd passion for revenge, but were merely striving to reconstruct a rhythm which was their very existence, and which must have been of direct importance to the Earth.

Revenge is the vilest passion known to life.

It has made Law possible, and by doing so it gave to Intellect the first grip at that universal dominion which is its ambition.

“I am sorry it is so little,” said he.

“A gift,” said the bearded man, “is never little,”

and he courteously ate his piece in three bites although he could have easily eaten it in one, and his children also made much of their pieces.

If I say these words to you ‘I love a man’ I do not say anything at all, and you do not hear one of the words which my heart is repeating over and over to itself in the silence of my body.

Young people are fools in their heads and old people are fools in their hearts, and they can only look at each other and pass by in wonder.

”

“To carry gifts to an ungrateful person cannot be justified and need not be mourned for. If your love is noble why do you treat it meanly? If it is lewd the man was right to reject it.”

“We love as the wind blows,” she replied.

“There is a thing,” said the Philosopher, “and it is both the biggest and the littlest thing in the world.”

“He is in that house,” said she, “and I would not let him see me here for anything in the world.”

“You have wasted all my time,” said the Philosopher, smiling.

“What else is time for?” said the girl, and she kissed the Philosopher and ran swiftly down the road.

“You have wasted all my time,” said the Philosopher, smiling.

“What else is time for?” said the girl, and she kissed the Philosopher and ran swiftly down the road.

She had been gone but a few moments when a man came out of the grey house and walked quickly across the grass.

“Young people,” said the Philosopher, “do not know what age is, and old people forget what youth was.

When you begin to grow old always think deeply of your youth, for an old man without memories is a wasted life, and nothing is worth remembering but our childhood.

I will tell you some of the differences between being old and young, and then you can ask me questions, and so we will get at both sides of the matter. First, an old man gets tired quicker than a boy.”

“That,” said the Philosopher triumphantly, “is the difference between age and youth.

Boys do things for no reason, and old people do not.

I wonder do we get old because we do things by reason instead of instinct?”

The path leading to their station was a long one, winding through great alleys of trees, which in some places overhung the road so thickly that even the full moon could not search out that deep blackness.

In the daylight these men would have arrested an Archangel and, if necessary, bludgeoned him, but in the nighttime a thousand fears afflicted and a multitude of sounds shocked them from every quarter.

Two men were holding the Philosopher, one on either side; the other two walked one before and one behind him.

“I did not, indeed,” she replied: “I have the stirabout with me this minute. It’s rather cold, I’m thinking, but it is better than nothing at all,” and she placed the bowl in his hands.

“I put sugar in it,” said she shyly, “and currants, and I have a spoon in my pocket.”

“It tastes well,” said the Philosopher, and he cleaned the basin so speedily that his wife wept because of his hunger.

“An innocent man,” said he, “cannot be oppressed, for he is fortified by his mind and his heart cheers him. It is only on a guilty person that the rigour of punishment can fall, for he punishes himself.

This is what I think, that a man should always obey the law with his body and always disobey it with his mind.

I have been arrested, the men of the law had me in their hands, and I will have to go back to them so that they may do whatever they have to do.”

Again he congratulated the nasturtium on its two bright children; but he thought of the gardens wherein they might have bloomed and the remembrance of that spacious, sunny freedom saddened him.

“Indeed, poor creatures!” said he, “ye also are in gaol.”

The blank, soundless yard troubled him so much that at last he called to the red-haired policeman and begged to be put into a cell in preference; and to the common cell he was, accordingly, conducted.

The darkness weighed very sadly upon him so that in a short time it did creep under his eyelids and drowned his happy pictures until a blackness possessed him both within and without—

“Can one’s mind go to prison as well as one’s body?” said he.

He strove desperately to regain his intellectual freedom, but he could not. He could conjure up no visions but those of fear. The creatures of the dark invaded him, fantastic terrors were thronging on every side:

but what does it matter now? And the reason I am a thief is because I got old without noticing it. Other people noticed it, but I did not.

I suppose age comes on one so gradually that it is seldom observed.

If there are wrinkles on one’s face we do not remember when they were not there: we put down all kind of little infirmities to sedentary living, and you will see plenty of young people bald.

“Let us be cows,” replied Seumas, “and then, maybe, we will find out.”

So they became cows and ate a few blades of grass, but they found that when they were cows they did not want to say anything but “moo,” and they decided that cows did not want to say anything more than that either, and they became interested in the reflection that, perhaps, nothing else was worth saying.

A long, thin, yellow-coloured fly was going in that direction on a journey, and he stopped to rest himself on the cow’s nose.

and this, in a more limited degree, is true also of every form of beauty; for there is something in an absolute beauty to chide away the desires of materiality and yet to dissolve the spirit in ecstasies of fear and sadness.

Beauty has no liking for Thought, but will send terror and sorrow on those who look upon her with intelligent eyes.

We may neither be angry nor gay in the presence of the moon, nor may we dare to think in her bailiwick, or the Jealous One will surely afflict us.