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

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

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 things that have been told us in our childhoodAre not so fragile.

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

Surely among a rich man’s flowering lawns,Amid the rustle of his planted hills,Life overflows without ambitious pains;And rains down life until the basin spills,And mounts more dizzy high the more it rainsAs though to choose...

If you believe in God,You are my soul’s one friend.

An intellectual hatred is the worst,So let her think opinions are accursed.

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

In dreams begins responsibility.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The...

Come swish around, my pretty punk,And keep me dancing stillThat I may stay a sober manAlthough I drink my fill.

An intellectual hate is the worst

Only God, my dear,Could love you for yourself aloneAnd not your yellow hair.

You have to die because no soul has passedThe heavenly threshold since you have opened school,But grass grows there, and rust upon the hinge;And they are lonely that must keep the watch.

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

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.

And therefore I have sailed the seas and comeTo the holy city of Byzantium.

Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labor of its unfamiliar thought.

See how the sacred old flamingoes come,Painting with shadow all the marble steps:Aged and wise, they seek their wonted perchesWithin the temple, devious walking, madeTo wander by their melancholy minds.

Now as at all times I can see in the mind’s eye, In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky With all their ancient...

Their hearts are wild,As be the hearts of birds, till children come.

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.

Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.

I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.

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...

The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write. . . .

Man can embody truth but he cannot know it. The intellect of man is forced to choose perfection of the life, or of the work, and if it take the second must refuse a heavenly...

Civilization is hoped together, brought under a rule, under the semblance of peace by manifold illusion, but Man’s life is thought, and he, despite his terror, cannot cease, ravening through century after century ravening, raging...

Swift has sailed into his rest;Savage indignation thereCannot lacerate his breast.

Think like a wise man but express yourself like the common people.

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

Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice?

The wind blows out of the gates of the day, The wind blows over the lonely of heart, And the lonely of heart is withered away

It is so many years before one can believe enough in what one feels even to know what the feeling is.

This melancholy London- I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air.

It is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am of the opinion of the ancient Jewish book which says ”there is no wisdom without leisure.”

All shuffle there; all cough in ink;All wear the carpet with their shoes;All think what other people think;All know the man their neighbour knows,Lord, what would they sayDid their Catullus walk that way?

I sigh that kiss you, For I must own That I shall miss you When you have grown.

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

Irish poets, learn your trade, sing whatever is well made, scorn the sort now growing up all out of shape from toe to top.

We . . . are no petty people. We are of the great stocks of Europe. We are the people of Burke; we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of...

We were the last romantics — chose for themeTraditional sanctity and loveliness.

The fascination of what’s difficultHas dried the sap out of my veins, and rentSpontaneous joy and natural contentOut of my heart.

Oh, who could have foretoldThat the heart grows old?

But where’s the wild dog that has praised his fleas?

There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven’t yet met.

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.

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.