William Butler Yeats

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

You know what the Englishman's idea of compromise is? He says, Some people say there is a God. Some people say there is no God. The truth probably lies somewhere between these two statements.

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.

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.

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.

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.