Style personality - deliberately adopted and therefore a mask - is the only escape from the hot-faced bargainers and money-changers.
~ William Butler Yeats
The best lack all conviction while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.
Too long a sacrifice Can make a stone of the heart.
Only that which does not teach which does not cry out which does not condescend which does not explain is irresistible.
Of our conflicts with others we make rhetoric of our conflicts with ourselves we make poetry.
Be secret and exult Because of all things known That is most difficult.
Florence Farr once said to me If we could say to ourselves with sincerity 'this passing moment is as good as any I shall ever know ' we could die upon the instant and be united with God.
The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.
Think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.
Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams, Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round.
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
In dreams begins responsibility.
Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.
The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.
To be born woman is to know - although they do not speak of it at school - women must labor to be beautiful.
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.
People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.
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.
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.
Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors on national taste.
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.
I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.'
I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.
There are no strangers here Only friends you haven't yet met.
If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise.
How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart.
We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.
One should not lose one's temper unless one is certain of getting more and more angry to the end.
The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alone.
