William Butler Yeats

“Politics How can I, that girl standing there, My attention fix On Roman or on Russian Or on Spanish politics? Yet here's a travelled man that knows What he talks about, And there's a politic...”

“THOUGH you are in your shining days, Voices among the crowd And new friends busy with your praise, Be not unkind or proud, But think about old friends the most: Time's bitter flood will rise...”

“I said: 'A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.”

“Nor dread nor hope attend A dying animal; A man awaits his end Dreading and hoping all.”

“Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.”

“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.”

“Accursed who brings to light of day the writings I have cast away.”

“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.”

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

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

“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, prid...”

“Once you attempt legislation upon religious grounds, you open the way for every kind of intolerance and religious persecution.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

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

“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.”