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George William Russell Quotes
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George William Russell who wrote with the pseudonym Æ , was an Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, painter and Irish nationalist. He was also a writer on mysticism, and a central figure in the group of devotees of theosophy which met in Dublin for many years. Wikipedia  

✵ 10. April 1867 – 17. July 1935
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George William Russell: 134 quotes1 like

George William Russell Quotes

“You would have understood me, had you waited;
I could have loved you, dear! as well as he:
Had we not been impatient, dear! and fated
Always to disagree.”

George William Russell

You Would Have Understood Me

“Ah, when I think this earth on which we tread
Hath borne these blossoms of the lovely dead,
And made the living heart I love to beat,
I look with sudden awe beneath my feet
As you with erring reverence overhead.”

George William Russell

By Still Waters (1906)

“How shallow is this mere that gleams!
Its depth of blue is from the skies;
And from a distant sun the dreams
And lovely light within your eyes.”

George William Russell

By Still Waters (1906)

“Sirs, I address this warning to you, the aristocracy of industry in this city, because, like all aristocracies, you tend to grow blind in long authority, and to be unaware that you and your class and its every action are being considered and judged day by day by those who have power to shake or overturn the whole social order, and whose restlessness in poverty today is making our industrial civilisation stir like a quaking bog. You do not seem to realise that your assumption that you are answerable to yourselves alone for your actions in the industries you control is one that becomes less and less tolerable in a world so crowded with necessitous life.”

George William Russell

Open letter to the Masters of Dublin (1913)

“The great deep thrills for through it everywhere
The breath of beauty blows.”

George William Russell

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

“The hope lives on age after age,
Earth with its beauty might be won
For labor as a heritage,
For this has Ireland lost a son.”

George William Russell

To the Memory of Some I knew Who are Dead and Who Loved Ireland (1917)

“Not unremembering we pass our exile from the starry ways:
One timeless hour in time we caught from the long night of endless days.”

George William Russell

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

“Hush, not a whisper! Let your heart alone go dreaming.
Dream unto dream may pass: deep in the heart alone
Murmurs the Mighty One his solemn undertone.”

George William Russell

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

“The offerings arise:
Hazes of rainbow light,
Pure crystal, blue, and gold,
Through dreamland take their flight;
And 'mid the sacrifice
God moveth as of old.
In miracles of fire
He symbols forth his days;
In gleams of crystal light
Reveals what pure pathways
Lead to the soul's desire,
The silence of the height.”

George William Russell

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

“I must endure the torturing ray,
And, with all beauty, all desire.
Ah, time-long must the effort be,
And far the way that I must go
To bring my spirit unto thee,
Behind the glass, within the glow.”

George William Russell

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

“Oh, I am so old, meseems
I am next of kin to Time,
The historian of her dreams
From the long forgotten prime.”

George William Russell

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

“You assumed that no other guarantees than those you asked were possible, and you determined deliberately, in cold anger, to starve out one third of the population of the city, to break the manhood of the men by the sight of the suffering of their wives and the hunger of their children. We read in the Dark Ages of the rack and thumb screw. But these iniquities were hidden and concealed from the knowledge of men in dungeons and torture chambers. Even in the Dark Ages, humanity could not endure the sight of such suffering, and it learnt of such misuse of power by slow degrees, through rumour, and when it was certain it razed its Bastilles to their foundations. It remained for the twentieth century and the capital city of Ireland to see an oligarchy of four hundred masters deciding openly upon starving one hundred thousand people, and refusing to consider any solution except that fixed by their pride. You, masters, asked men to do that which masters of labour in any other city in these islands had not dared to do. You insolently demanded of those men who were members of a trade union that they should resign from that union; and from those who were not members, you insisted on a vow that they would never join it.”

George William Russell

Open letter to the Masters of Dublin (1913)

“Of the Earth, of the Mother, my heart with her heart in accord:
As I lie mid the cool green tresses that mantle her breast
I begin with the grass once again to be bound to the Lord.”

George William Russell

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)