Guess quote

William Butler Yeats [1865-1939] Irish

Rank: 4
Poet (with poems)

Fantasy, Formalism, Modernism, Neoromanticism, Rhymers club, Sonnet, Spiritualism, Symbolism, Victorian

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, he helped the foundation of the Abbey Theatre, and in his later years served as an Irish Senator for two terms and was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival along with Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn and others.

Dreams, Alone, Design, History, Saint Patrick's Day, Wisdom, Anger, Art, Beauty, Best, Business, Courage, Dating, Death, Education, Friendship, Happiness, Imagination, Life, Men, Motivational, Poetry, Romantic, Sympathy, Time, Truth

Quote	Tags	Rank
There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met.	Friendship	101
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.	Education	102
Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.	Life	103
People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.	Best, Imagination	104
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, History	105
I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.'	Beauty, Men	106
Think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.	Saint Patrick's Day	107
Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.	Happiness	108
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.		109
Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.	Motivational	110
Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams, Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round.	Dreams	111
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	112
Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice?		113
The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.	Business	114
We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding something outside us.		115
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.	Dreams	116
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.		117
The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.	Time	118
All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions.		119
If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise.	Wisdom	120
Joy is of the will which labours, which overcomes obstacles, which knows triumph.		121
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!		122
Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.	Saint Patrick's Day	123
Once you attempt legislation upon religious grounds, you open the way for every kind of intolerance and religious persecution.		124
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.	Sympathy	125
Talent perceives differences; genius, unity.		126
How can we know the dancer from the dance?		201
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.		202
Those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love.		203
The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.		204
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	205
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.		206
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.		207
The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alone.	Alone	208
We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.	Poetry	209
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.	Truth	210
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, History	211
Be secret and exult, Because of all things known That is most difficult.		212
How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart.	Romantic	213
But was there ever dog that praised his fleas?		214
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.		215
Choose your companions from the best; Who draws a bucket with the rest soon topples down the hill.		216
A pity beyond all telling is hid in the heart of love.		217
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.	Dating	218
One should not lose one's temper unless one is certain of getting more and more angry to the end.	Anger	219
In dreams begins responsibility.	Dreams	220
I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.	Art	221
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.		222
Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.		223
Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors on national taste.	Design	224
Accursed who brings to light of day the writings I have cast away.		225
Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.		226
I am of a healthy long lived race, and our minds improve with age.		301
The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.		302
And say my glory was I had such friends.		303
Nor dread nor hope attend a dying animal; a man awaits his end dreading and hoping all.		304
Irish poets, learn your trade, sing whatever is well made, scorn the sort now growing up all out of shape from toe to top.		305
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.		306
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.		307
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.		308
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, Wisdom	309
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.		310
A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and unstitching has been naught.		311
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.		312
To be born woman is to know - although they do not speak of it at school - women must labor to be beautiful.		313
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.		314
An intellectual hatred is the worst.		315
Cast your mind on other days that we in coming days may be still the indomitable Irishry.		316

The script ran 0.007 seconds.