Now as to magic. It is surely ...

Now as to magic. It is surely absurd to hold me \
Now as to magic. It is surely absurd to hold me "weak" or otherwise because I choose to persist in a study which I decided deliberately four or five years ago to make, next to my poetry, the most important pursuit of my life...If I had not made magic my constant study I could not have written a single word of my Blake book, nor would The Countess Kathleen have ever come to exist. The mystical life is the center of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.

Quotes from the same author

There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met.
Think as a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.
No man has ever lived that had enough of children's gratitude or woman's love.
Out of Ireland have we come, great hatred, little room, maimed us at the start. I carry from my mother's womb a fanatic heart.
I am of a healthy long lived race, and our minds improve with age.