William Butler Yeats

“Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love.”

“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!”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

“Be secret and exult, Because of all things known That is most difficult.”

“An intellectual hatred is the worst.”

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

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

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

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

“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.”

“Think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.”