Quotes By William Butler Yeats

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Joy is of the will which labours, which overcomes obstacles, which knows triumph.

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.

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.

We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding something outside us.

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.

The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.

Once you attempt legislation upon religious grounds, you open the way for every kind of intolerance and religious persecution.

Think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Cast your mind on other days that we in coming days may be still the indomitable Irishry.

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.

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

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

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 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.

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

Accursed who brings to light of day the writings I have cast away.

Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.