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

One should not lose one's temper unless one is certain of getting more and more angry to the end.
William Butler Yeats

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.
William Butler Yeats

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

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

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
William Butler Yeats

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.
William Butler Yeats

The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.
William Butler Yeats

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

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

The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.
William Butler Yeats

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.
William Butler Yeats

There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met.
William Butler Yeats

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.
William Butler Yeats

Think where mans glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.
William Butler Yeats

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.
William Butler Yeats

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

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

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

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
William Butler Yeats