Quotes By William Butler Yeats

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

In dreams begins responsibility.

Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.

I am of a healthy long lived race, and our minds improve with age.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Irish poets, learn your trade, sing whatever is well made, scorn the sort now growing up all out of shape from toe to top.

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.

But was there ever dog that praised his fleas?

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

All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions.

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

Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame!

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

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

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