"A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and unstinting has been naught."
--William Butler Yeats
"A pity beyond all telling is hid in the heart of love."
--William Butler Yeats
Topic: Opinion
"All empty sould tend toward extreme opinions."
--William Butler Yeats
"An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick"
--William Butler Yeats
"And say my glory was I had such friends."
--William Butler Yeats
"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."
--William Butler Yeats
"But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."
--William Butler Yeats
"Choose your companions from the best; Who draws a bucket with the rest soon topples down the hill."
--William Butler Yeats
"Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors on national taste."
--William Butler Yeats
"Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking."
--William Butler Yeats
"Education is not filling a pail but the lighting of a fire."
--William Butler Yeats
"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."
--William Butler Yeats
"Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labor of its unfamiliar thought."
--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
"Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing."
--William Butler Yeats
"How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
--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
"I carry from my mother's womb a fanatic's heart."
--William Butler Yeats
"I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal. The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth."
--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 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
"I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.'"
--William Butler Yeats
"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."
--William Butler Yeats
"I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind."
--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
"In dreams begins responsibility."
--William Butler Yeats
"It is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am of the opinion of the ancient Jewish book which says "there is no wisdom without leisure.""
--William Butler Yeats
"Land of Heart's Desire, Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, time an endless song."
--William Butler Yeats
Topic: Life
"Life is a long preparation for something that never happens."
--William Butler Yeats
"Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned."
--William Butler Yeats
Topic: Poetry
"Of our conflicts with others we make rhetoric; of our conflicts with ourselves we make poetry."
--William Butler Yeats
Topic: Anger
"One should not lose one's temper unless one is certain of getting more and more angry to the end."
--William Butler Yeats
"Our stitching and unstitching has been naught."
--William Butler Yeats
"People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind."
--William Butler Yeats
"Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams, Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round."
--William Butler Yeats
"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."
--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
"The intellect of man is forced to choose perfection of the life, or of the work, and if it take the second must refuse a heavenly mansion, raging in the dark."
--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
"The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart."
--William Butler Yeats
"The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober."
--William Butler Yeats
"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."
--William Butler Yeats
Topic: Language
"Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people."
--William Butler Yeats
"Think where mans glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends."
--William Butler Yeats
Topic: Friendship
"Think where man's glory most begins and ends,
And say my glory was I had such friends."
--William Butler Yeats
"This melancholy London - I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air."
--William Butler Yeats
"Those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love."
--William Butler Yeats
"To be born woman is to know - although they do not speak of it at school - women must labor to be beautiful."
--William Butler Yeats
"Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O. When may it suffice?"
--William Butler Yeats
"Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."
--William Butler Yeats
"We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding something outside us."
--William Butler Yeats
"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."
--William Butler Yeats
"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."
--"An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick"
--William Butler Yeats
"And say my glory was I had such friends."
--William Butler Yeats
"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."
--William Butler Yeats
"But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."
--William Butler Yeats
"Choose your companions from the best; Who draws a bucket with the rest soon topples down the hill."
--William Butler Yeats
"Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors on national taste."
--William Butler Yeats
"Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking."
--William Butler Yeats
"Education is not filling a pail but the lighting of a fire."
--William Butler Yeats
"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."
--William Butler Yeats
"Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labor of its unfamiliar thought."
--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
"Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing."
--William Butler Yeats
"How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
--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
"I carry from my mother's womb a fanatic's heart."
--William Butler Yeats
"I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal. The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth."
--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 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
"I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.'"
--William Butler Yeats
"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."
--William Butler Yeats
"I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind."
--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
"In dreams begins responsibility."
--William Butler Yeats
"It is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am of the opinion of the ancient Jewish book which says "there is no wisdom without leisure.""
--William Butler Yeats
"Land of Heart's Desire, Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, time an endless song."
--William Butler Yeats
Topic: Life
"Life is a long preparation for something that never happens."
--William Butler Yeats
"Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned."
--William Butler Yeats
Topic: Poetry
"Of our conflicts with others we make rhetoric; of our conflicts with ourselves we make poetry."
--William Butler Yeats
Topic: Anger
"One should not lose one's temper unless one is certain of getting more and more angry to the end."
--William Butler Yeats
"Our stitching and unstitching has been naught."
--William Butler Yeats
"People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind."
--William Butler Yeats
"Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams, Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round."
--William Butler Yeats
"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."
--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
"The intellect of man is forced to choose perfection of the life, or of the work, and if it take the second must refuse a heavenly mansion, raging in the dark."
--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
"The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart."
--William Butler Yeats
"The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober."
--William Butler Yeats
"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."
--William Butler Yeats
Topic: Language
"Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people."
--William Butler Yeats
"Think where mans glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends."
--William Butler Yeats
Topic: Friendship
"Think where man's glory most begins and ends,
And say my glory was I had such friends."
--William Butler Yeats
"This melancholy London - I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air."
--William Butler Yeats
"Those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love."
--William Butler Yeats
"To be born woman is to know - although they do not speak of it at school - women must labor to be beautiful."
--William Butler Yeats
"Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O. When may it suffice?"
--William Butler Yeats
"Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."
--William Butler Yeats
"We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding something outside us."
--William Butler Yeats
"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."
--William Butler Yeats
"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."
--William Butler Yeats
Topic: Love
"Wine comes in at the mouthAnd love comes in at the eye;That's all we shall know for truthBefore we grow old and die."
--William Butler Yeats
"Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses."
--William Butler Yeats
Topic: Love
"Wine comes in at the mouthAnd love comes in at the eye;That's all we shall know for truthBefore we grow old and die."
--William Butler Yeats
"Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses."
--William Butler Yeats
