“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.”
Death
“Choose your companions from the best Who draws a bucket with the rest soon topples down the hill.”
BestAll Quotes by William Butler Yeats
“I am of a healthy long lived race, and our minds improve with age.”
Age“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.”
Men“Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.”
Happiness“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.”
God“The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.”
Business“Choose your companions from the best Who draws a bucket with the rest soon topples down the hill.”
Best“We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.”
Poetry“If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise.”
Wisdom“But I, being poor, have only my dreams I have spread my dreams under your feet Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
Dreams“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.”
Design“I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.'”
Men“Think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.”
Friendship“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.”
Great“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.”
Courage“Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.”
Truth“One should not lose one's temper unless one is certain of getting more and more angry to the end.”
Anger“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.”
Alone“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
Best“Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.”
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