“Perhaps I may find my hermitage this Spring in truth and reality, but I must go to England once again first, to solve one or two questions and complete my memoirs.”

Imagining withdrawal from society while recognising unfinished obligations · Diary, 30 January 1896

• Hope
• Memory
• Solitude

“We made our storm and stress together at Frankfort when Darwinism was a novelty, and solved the riddle of the universe together gazing at the stars.”

Remembering the intellectual excitement and intimacy of an early friendship · Diary, January 1900

• Friendship
• Memory
• Time

“No life is perfect that has not been lived, youth in feeling, manhood in battle, old age in meditation.”

Defining fulfilment as a progression from feeling through action to reflection · Preface to complete edition of his verse

• Memory
• Mortality
• Time

“I have lived my life in full.”

A characteristically unqualified summing-up of a life intensely experienced · Conversation, recollected by Lady Gregory, 1921

• Memory
• Mortality
• Time