William Butler Yeats
Nor dread nor hope attend a dying animal; a man awaits his end dreading and hoping all.Collection: Hope
Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That's all we shall know for truth Before we grow old and die.Collection: Dating
Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought - asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation.Collection: Design
Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.Collection: Motivational
Come away, O human child: To the waters and the wild with a fairy, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.Collection: Sympathy
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.Collection: Dreams
Think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.Collection: Saint
Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.Collection: Saint
The years like great black oxen tread the world, and God, the herdsman goads them on behind, and I am broken by their passing feet.Collection: God
People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.Collection: Imagination
The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.Collection: Men
Why should we honour those that die upon the field of battle? A man may show as reckless a courage in entering into the abyss of himself.Collection: Courage
If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise.Collection: Wisdom
Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.Collection: Truth
In dreams begins responsibility.Collection: Dreams
I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.Collection: Art
One should not lose one's temper unless one is certain of getting more and more angry to the end.Collection: Anger
How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart.Collection: Romantic
I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.'Collection: Beauty
I am of a healthy long lived race, and our minds improve with age.Collection: Age
We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.Collection: Poetry
The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.Collection: Business
Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams, Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round.Collection: Dreams
The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.Collection: Best
There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met.Collection: Friendship
Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors on national taste.Collection: Design
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.Collection: Education
The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alone.Collection: Alone
You that would judge me, do not judge alone this book or that, come to this hallowed place where my friends' portraits hang and look thereon; Ireland's history in their lineaments trace; think where man's glory most begins and ends and say my glory was I had such friends.Collection: Alone
But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.Collection: Dreams
To be born woman is to know - although they do not speak of it at school - women must labor to be beautiful.Collection: Women
Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.Collection: Happiness
The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.Collection: Time
Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame!
Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice?
Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.
Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.
I have believed the best of every man. And find that to believe is enough to make a bad man show him at his best, or even a good man swings his lantern higher.
Talent perceives differences; genius, unity.
Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before.
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
When you are old and gray and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book and slowly read, and dream of the soft look your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.
I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.
All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions.
But was there ever dog that praised his fleas?
Joy is of the will which labours, which overcomes obstacles, which knows triumph.
A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
I know that I shall meet my fate somewhere among the clouds above; those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love.
I am still of opinion that only two topics can be of the least interest to a serious and studious mood - sex and the dead.
Those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love.