"Man can embody truth but he cannot know it."

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

"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."

"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."

"And say my glory was I had such friends."

"All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions."

"Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."

"In dreams begins responsibility."

"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 heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.'"

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"An intellectual hatred is the worst."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

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

"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."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

"Joy is of the will which labours, which overcomes obstacles, which knows triumph."

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

"We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry."

"Accursed who brings to light of day the writings I have cast away."

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

"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!"

"The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time."

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

"Life is a long preparation for something that never happens."

"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."

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