Seamus Heaney Quotes

Failure to recognize the obvious is not a good characteristic of a leader.

Sinners often speak the truth. And saints have led people astray. Examine what is said, not the one who says it.

This commitment to truth is something one senses more and more Americans yearning for, just as they are becoming more and more sophisticated at knowing when the truth is being obscured - an irony that seems to elude most of today's elected officials.

They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve.

A smart man only believes half of what he hears, a wise man knows which half.

Ah! yes, I know: those who see me rarely trust my word: I must look too intelligent to keep it.

The first point of wisdom is to discern that which is false; the second, to know that which is true.

Genius is initiative on fire.

Let them call it mischief: When it is past and prospered t'will be virtue.

Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it Treason.

If we insist that public life be reserved for those whose personal history is pristine, we are not going to get paragons of virtue running our affairs. We will get the very rich, who will contract out the messy things in life: the very dull, who have nothing to hide and nothing to show: and the very devious, expert at covering their tracks and ambitious enough to risk their discovery.

We tell only part of a man's qualities in his presence, and all of them when he is not present.

When you choose a leader, follow him as a man, not as a god.

I'm not deceived by people, because I don't pay attention to people.

I have my sympathies and also my critical views, and they aren't much of a secret, but my first job is to see and hear and think about what I've seen and heard.

You can't depend on the kind of folks people think they are - you've got to go by what they do. And I wouldn't give much for a man that some folks hadn't thought was a fool, in his time.

You have to keep your mind as wide-open as your eyes, because almost nothing is what it seems.

Intellect is not wisdom.

Besides learning to see, there is another art to be learned - not to see what is not.

One of the hardest tasks as a human being is knowing when to keep an open mind, and when not to.

The first lesson a watcher learns is to separate truth from illusion. Because in the world of magics, it's the hardest thing to do.

A man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe.

The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implications of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern . . . this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience.

Anyone who has gumption knows what it is, and anyone who hasn’t can never know what it is. So there is no need of defining it.

...Wizard's Fifth Rule: Mind what people do, not only what they say, for deeds will betray a lie.