quotes from classic

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.

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How can we know the dancer from the dance?

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

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

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

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

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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.

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In dreams begins responsibility.

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

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I carry from my mother's womb a fanatic's heart.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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My country is Kiltartan Cross; my countrymen Kiltartan's poor.

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

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

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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.

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