Quotes

“And say my glory was I had such friends.” William Butler Yeats

“Accursed who brings to light of day the writings I have cast away.” William Butler Yeats

“How can we know the dancer from the dance?” William Butler Yeats

“Cast your mind on other days that we in coming days may be still the indomitable Irishry.” William Butler Yeats

“An intellectual hatred is the worst.” William Butler Yeats

“Choose your companions from the best; Who draws a bucket with the rest soon topples down the hill.” William Butler Yeats

“I am of a healthy long lived race, and our minds improve with age.” William Butler Yeats

“I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.” William Butler Yeats

“Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.” William Butler Yeats

“Those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love.” William Butler Yeats

“I balanced all, brought all to mind, the years to come seemed waste of breath, a waste of breath the years behind, in balance with this life, this death.” William Butler Yeats

“The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.” William Butler Yeats

“Irish poets, learn your trade, sing whatever is well made, scorn the sort now growing up all out of shape from toe to top.” William Butler Yeats

“The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.” William Butler Yeats

“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.” William Butler Yeats

“In dreams begins responsibility.” William Butler Yeats

“Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice?” William Butler Yeats

“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.” William Butler Yeats

“The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alone.” William Butler Yeats

“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.” William Butler Yeats

“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.” William Butler Yeats

“I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful. One almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking. It is all like an opera.” William Butler Yeats

“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.” William Butler Yeats

“One should not lose one's temper unless one is certain of getting more and more angry to the end.” William Butler Yeats

“An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick, unless soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing for every tatter in its mortal dress.” William Butler Yeats

“A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and unstitching has been naught.” William Butler Yeats

“I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.'” William Butler Yeats

“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.” William Butler Yeats

“If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise.” William Butler Yeats

“We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding something outside us.” William Butler Yeats