William Butler Yeats Quotes

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

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

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

"How can we know the dancer from the dance?"

"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."
History

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

"Think where mans glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"In dreams begins responsibility."
Dreams

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

"Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people."

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

"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."

"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."

"Choose your companions from the best; Who draws a bucket with the rest soon topples down the hill."

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

"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."