The value of three things is justly appreciated by all classes of men: youth, by the old; health, by the diseased; and wealth, by the needy.
Where Nature's end of language is declin'd, And men talk only to conceal the mind.
How blessings brighten as they take their flight.
How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, How complicate, how wonderful, is man!. . . Midway from nothing to the Deity!
Too low they build who build below the skies.
Who lives to Nature, rarely can be poor ; who lives to fancy, never can be rich.
Early, bright, transient, chaste as morning dew, She sparkled, was exhaled, and went to heaven.
Humankind, which discovers its capacity to transform and in a certain sense create the world through its own work, forgets that this is always based on God's prior and original gift of things that are. People think that they can make arbitrary use of the earth, subjecting it without restraint to their wills, as though the earth did not have its own requisites and a prior God-given purpose, which human beings can indeed develop but must not betray.
Madam President, speaking here in Dublin Castle it is impossible to ignore the weight of history, as it was yesterday when you and I laid wreaths at the Garden of Remembrance.
I believe that the basic nature of human beings is gentle and compassionate. It is therefore in our own interest to encourage that nature, to make it live within us, to leave room for it to develop. If on the contrary we use violence, it is as if we voluntarily obstruct the positive side of human nature and prevent its evolution.
There are moments where history is made. . . This is one of those moments.