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

Education is not the filling of the pail, but, the lighting of the fire.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

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.

A mermaid found a swimming lad, Picked him for her own, Pressed her body to his body, Laughed; and plunging down Forgot in cruel happiness That even lovers drown.

A shudder in the loins engenders thereThe broken wall, the burning roof and towerAnd Agamemnon dead.

You think it horrible that lust and rageShould dance attendance upon my old age;They were not such a plague when I was young;What else have I to spur me into song?

Poor men have grown to be rich men,And rich men grown to be poor again,And I am running to Paradise.

Did that play of mine send outCertain men the English shot?

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

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

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

When two close kindred meetWhat better than call a dance?

All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions

Nor dread nor hope attendA dying animal;A man awaits his endDreading and hoping all.

He knows death to the bone –Man has created death.

Man can embody truth bet he cannot know it.

When you are old and gray and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book and slowly read, and dream of the soft look your eyes had once, and of their...

Out of Ireland have we come, great hatred, little room, maimed us at the start. I carry from my mother’s womb a fanatic heart.

Farewell — farewell,For I am weary of the weight of time.

But I, being poor, have only my dreams. I have spread my dreams under your feet; tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.

I heard the old, old, men say “all that’s beautiful drifts away, like the waters

Because of that great nobleness of hersThe fire that stirs about her, when she stirs,Burns but more clearly.

There’s more enterpriseIn walking naked.

If I make the lashes dark And the eyes more bright And the lips more scarlet, Or ask if all be right From mirror after mirror, No vanity’s displayed: I’m looking for the face I...

The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.

How can we know the dancer from the dance?

I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal. The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth.

I sigh that kiss you,For I must ownThat I shall miss youWhen you have grown.

Half close your eyelids, loosen your hair,And dream about the great and their pride;They have spoken against you everywhere,But weigh this song with the great and their pride;I made it out of a mouthful of...

Irish poets, learn your trade,Sing whatever is well made.

Oh, Love is the crooked thing, there is nobody wise enough to find out all that is in it, for he will be thinking about love til the stars run away and the shadows eaten...

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

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

When we are young we long to tread a way none have trod before

If I make the lashes darkAnd the eyes more brightAnd the lips more scarlet,Or ask if all be rightFrom mirror after mirror,No vanity’s displayed:I’m looking for the face I hadBefore the world was made.

Who mocks at music mocks at love.

Considering that, all hatred driven hence,The soul recovers radical innocenceAnd learns at last that it is self-delighting,Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,And that its own sweet will is Heaven’s will.

The ghost of Roger Casement is beating on the door.

The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.

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.

Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, time an endless song.

I would mould a world of fire and dew.

The problem with some people is that when they aren’t drunk, they’re sober.

O love is the crooked thing,There is nobody wise enoughTo find out all that is in it.

I would be — for no knowledge is worth a straw –Ignorant and wanton as the dawn.

Time’s bitter flood will rise, Your beauty perish and be lost For all eyes but these eyes.

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...

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.

To be born woman is to know — although they do not speak of it at school — women must labor to be beautiful.