William Butler Yeats quotes

Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors on national taste.

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.

People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.

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.

Nor dread nor hope attend a dying animal; a man awaits his end dreading and hoping all.

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.

I am of a healthy long lived race, and our minds improve with age.

People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.

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.

To be born woman is to know - although they do not speak of it at school - women must labor to be beautiful.

The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.

I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.

There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met.

The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

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.

How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart.

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.

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.

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.

In dreams begins responsibility.

I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.'

But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.

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.

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.

Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.

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.

I think it better that in times like these a poet's mouth be silent, for in truth we have no gift to set a statesman right.

If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise.

Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams, Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round.

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

The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.

Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.'

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.

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.

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.

The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alone.

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.