Bred to a harder thingThan Triumph, turn awayAnd like a laughing stringWhereon mad fingers play Amid a place of stone,Be secret and exult,Because of all things knownThat is most difficult.

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

Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.

Now that my ladder’s goneI must lie down where all ladders startIn the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light, I would spread the cloths under...

Out of our quarrels with others we make rhetoric. Out of our quarrels with ourselves we make poetry.

All changed, changed utterly:A terrible beauty is born.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last slouches toward Bethlehem to be born

Time drops in decay, Like a candle burnt out, And the mountains and woods Have their day, have their day;

One should not lose one’s temper unless one is certain of getting more and more angry to the end.

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

Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone, It’s with O’Leary in the grave

TOIL and grow rich, what’s that but to lie with a foul witch and after, drained dry, to be brought to the chamber where lies one long sought with despair.

What do you think of when alone at night?Do not the things your mothers spoke about,Before they took the candle from the bedside,Rush up into the mind and master it,Till you believe in them against...

It is a hard thing to be married to a man of learning that must always be having arguments.

I bear a burden that might well tryMen that do all by rule,And what can IThat am a wandering-witted foolBut pray to God that He easeMy great responsibilities?

In dreams begin responsibility.

I have believed the best of every man, and find that to believe it is enough to make a bad man show him at his best or even a good man swing his lantern higher.

Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.

But was there ever dog that praised his fleas?

Supreme art is a traditional statement of certain heroic and religious truth, passed on from age to age, modified by individual genius, but never abandoned

Speak, speak, for underneath the cover thereThe sand is running from the upper glass,And when the last grain’s through, I shall be lost.

Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say;Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day;The second best’s a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.

“Because I am mad about womenI am mad about the hills,”Said that wild old wicked manWho travels where God wills. . . .

I think it better that at times like theseWe poets keep our mouths shut, for in truthWe have no gift to set a statesman right;He’s had enough of meddling who can pleaseA young girl in...

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!

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

Who stole your wits awayAnd where are they gone?

My fiftieth year had come and gone,I sat, a solitary man,In a crowded London shop,And open book and empty cupOn the marble table-top.

The land of fairy, where nobody gets old and godly and grave, where nobody gets old and crafty and wise, where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue.

I carry from my mother’s womb a fanatic’s heart.

Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.

Things said or done long years ago, Or things I did not do or say But thought that I might say or do, Weigh me down, and not a day But something is recalled, My...

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

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

One had a lovely face, and two or three had charm, but charm and face were in vain. Because the mountain grass cannot keep the form where the mountain hare has lain.

I’d as soon listen to dried peas in a bladder, as listen to your thoughts.

I think a man and a woman should choose each other for life, for the simple reason that a long life with all its accidents is barely enough for a man and a woman to...

Hell is the place of those who have denied;They find there what they planted and what dug,A Lake of Spaces, and a Wood of Nothing,And wander there and drift, and never ceaseWailing for substance.

Hands, do what you’re bid;Bring the balloon of the mindThat bellies and drags in the windInto its narrow shed.

Land of Heart’s Desire, Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, time an endless song.

Why, what could she have done, being what she is? Was there another Troy for her to burn?

All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions.

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

I call on those that call me son,Grandson, or great-grandson,On uncles, aunts, great-uncles or great-aunts,To judge what I have done.Have I, that put it into words,Spoilt what old loins have sent?

Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.

For men improve with the years;And yet, and yet,Is this my dream, or the truth?

Ecstasy is from the contemplation of things vaster than the individual and imperfectly seen perhaps, by all those that still live.

All empty souls tend to extreme opinion.