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

"The intellect of man is forced to choose perfection of the life, or of the work, and if it take the second must refuse a heavenly mansion, raging in the dark."

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

"I think it better that at times like theseWe poets keep our mouths shut, for in truthWe have no gift to set a statesman right;He's had enough of meddling who can pleaseA young girl in the indolence of her youthOr an old man upon a winter's night."

"Out of our quarrels with others we make rhetoric. Out of our quarrels with ourselves we make poetry."

"Half close your eyelids, loosen your hair,And dream about the great and their pride;They have spoken against you everywhere,But weigh this song with the great and their pride;I made it out of a mouthful of air,Their children's children shall say they have lied."

"Where, where but here have Pride and Truth,That long to give themselves for wage,To shake their wicked sides at youthRestraining reckless middle age?"

"Our words must seem to be inevitable."

"Words alone are certain good."

"I have passed with a nod of the headOr polite meaningless words,Or have lingered awhile and saidPolite meaningless words. . . ."

"Though leaves are many, the root is one;Through all the lying days of my youthI swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;Now I may wither into the truth."

"The hour of the waning of love has beset us, And weary and worn are our sad souls now; Let us part, ere the season of passion forget us, With a kiss and a tear on thy drooping brow."

"Poor men have grown to be rich men,And rich men grown to be poor again,And I am running to Paradise."

"I bear a burden that might well tryMen that do all by rule,And what can IThat am a wandering-witted foolBut pray to God that He easeMy great responsibilities?"

"Did that play of mine send outCertain men the English shot?"

"Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses."

"The years like great black oxen tread the world, and God the herdsman treads them on behind, and I am broken by their passing feet."

"I believe in the practice and philosophy of what we have agreed to call magic, and what I must call the evocation of spirits, though I do not know what they are, in the power of creating magic illusions in the visions of truth in the depths of the minds when the eyes are closed."

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

"The fascination of what's difficultHas dried the sap out of my veins, and rentSpontaneous joy and natural contentOut of my heart."

"Now I know that twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, and what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

"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."

"It would need a great deal of wisdom to know what it is we want to know."

"Land of Heart's Desire, Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, time an endless song."

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

"Caught in that sensual music all neglect monuments of unaging intellect"

"You have to die because no soul has passedThe heavenly threshold since you have opened school,But grass grows there, and rust upon the hinge;And they are lonely that must keep the watch."

"Swift has sailed into his rest;Savage indignation thereCannot lacerate his breast."

"Speak, speak, for underneath the cover thereThe sand is running from the upper glass,And when the last grain's through, I shall be lost."

"Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot!A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot,Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again!The beggars have changed places but the lash goes on."

"Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave"

"For men improve with the years;And yet, and yet,Is this my dream, or the truth?"

"Out of Ireland have we come. Great hatred, little room, Maimed us at the start."

"We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding something outside us."

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

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

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

"Mysticism has been in the past and probably ever will be one of the great powers of the world and it is bad scholarship to pretend the contrary. You may argue against it but you should no more treat it with disrespect than a perfectly cultivated writ"

"In dreams begin responsibility."

"That William BlakeWho beat upon the wallTill Truth obeyed his call."

"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"

"Where got I that truth? Out of a medium's mouth, Out of nothing it came, Out of the forest loam, Out of dark night where lay The crowns of Nineveh"

"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."

"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."

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

"Time to put off the world and go somewhereAnd find my health again in the sea air,"Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,"And make my soul before my pate is bare."

"An intellectual hate is the worst"

"I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal. . . . The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth."

"Out of Ireland have we come.Great hatred, little room,Maimed us at the start."

"Considering that, all hatred driven hence,The soul recovers radical innocenceAnd learns at last that it is self-delighting,Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will."