"When soldiers have been baptized in the fire of a battle-field, they have all one rank in my eyes."

"My downfall raises me to infinite heights."

"Never awake me when you have good news to announce, because with good news nothing presses; but when you have bad news, arouse me immediately, for then there is not an instant to be lost."

"The only victory over love is flight."

"The first virtue in a soldier is endurance of fatigue; courage is only the second virtue."

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."

"Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in."

"Ability is of little account without opportunity."

"The extent of your consciousness is limited only by your ability to love and to embrace with your love the space around you, and all it contains"

"The truest wisdom is a resolute determination."

"If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon shots."

"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever."

"History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon."

"What is history but a fable agreed upon?"

"A picture is worth a thousand words."

"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."