Quotes By William Butler Yeats

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.

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

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.

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, unless soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing for every tatter in its mortal dress.

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice?

And say my glory was I had such friends.

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

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.

The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.

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

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

Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.

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

A pity beyond all telling is hid in the heart of love.