William Butler Yeats Biography | Inspiration Quotations | Motivation Quotes

William Butler Yeats Motivational Quotations:

• “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!”

•  “There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met.”

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

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

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

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

•  “How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart.”

•  “The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.”

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

•  “In dreams begins responsibility.”

•  “If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise.”

•  “Talent perceives differences; genius, unity.”

•  “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.”

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

•  “Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.”

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

•  “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 shadows deep.”

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

  

• "Come away, O human child: To the waters and the wild with a fairy, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.”

•  “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.”

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

•  “All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions.”

•  “Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.”

•  “Joy is of the will which labours, which overcomes obstacles, which knows triumph.”

• “I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful. One almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking. It is all like an opera.”

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

•  “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”

•  “Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”

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

•  “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.”

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

•  “Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That's all we shall know for truth Before we grow old and die.”

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

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

•  “And say my glory was I had such friends.”

  

   

• “You know what the Englishman's idea of compromise is? He says, Some people say there is a God. Some people say there is no God. The truth probably lies somewhere between these two statements.”

•  “But was there ever dog that praised his fleas?”

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

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

•  “How can we know the dancer from the dance?”

•  “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.”

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

•  “We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding something outside us.”

•  “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.”

•  “Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before.”

•  “We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.”

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

•  “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.”

•  “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.”

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

•  “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.”

•  “One should not lose one's temper unless one is certain of getting more and more angry to the end.”

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

•  “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.”

•  “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.”

•  “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.”

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

•  “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.”

•  “A pity beyond all telling is hid in the heart of love.”

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

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

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

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

•  “An intellectual hatred is the worst.”

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