43 Quotes By William Butler Yeats


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

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.
William Butler Yeats on alone

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

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

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
William Butler Yeats on best

People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.
William Butler Yeats on best

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.
William Butler Yeats on best

Choose your companions from the best Who draws a bucket with the rest soon topples down the hill.
William Butler Yeats on best

The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.
William Butler Yeats on business

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.
William Butler Yeats on courage

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.
William Butler Yeats on death

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.
William Butler Yeats on design

In dreams begins responsibility.
William Butler Yeats on 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.
William Butler Yeats on dreams

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
William Butler Yeats on dreams

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

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
William Butler Yeats on education

Think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.
William Butler Yeats on friendship

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.
William Butler Yeats on god

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.
William Butler Yeats on god