Retire into thyself. The rational principle which rules has this nature, that it is content with itself when it does what is just, and so secures tranquility. Book VII

The controlling Intelligence understands its own nature, and what it does, and whereon it works. Book VI

This ordered universe, which is the same for all, was not created by any one of the gods or by man, but always was, is, and shall be, an ever-living Flame that is first kindled and then quenched in turn. [The universe bursts forth and then is reabsorbed, yet its Source is ever-living, like a Sun that never sets] and who can hide from that which never sets? [That eternal Intelligence in man] is forever beyond change; Fragments

He tried to weigh his soul to see if it was a poet's soul. Melancholy was the dominant note of his temperament, he thought, but it was a melancholy tempered by recurrences of faith and resignation and simple joy. If he could give expression to it in a book of poems perhaps men would listen. Dubliners