"If I make the lashes darkAnd the eyes more brightAnd the lips more scarlet,Or ask if all be rightFrom mirror after mirror,No vanity's displayed:I'm looking for the face I hadBefore the world was made."

"An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick"

"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."

"A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and unstinting has been naught."

"Who can tell the dancer from the dance?"

"How can we know the dancer from the dance?"

"Come swish around, my pretty punk,And keep me dancing stillThat I may stay a sober manAlthough I drink my fill."

"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."

"I at midnight by the clock may creep into your bed."

"Because of that great nobleness of hersThe fire that stirs about her, when she stirs,Burns but more clearly."

"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."

"The things that have been told us in our childhoodAre not so fragile."

"Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors on national taste."

"We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry."

"Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking."

"It is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am of the opinion of the ancient Jewish book which says ''there is no wisdom without leisure.''"

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

"Accursed who brings to light of day the writings I have cast away."

"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."

"Choose your companions from the best; Who draws a bucket with the rest soon topples down the hill."

"But was there ever dog that praised his fleas?"

"Be secret and exult, Because of all things known That is most difficult."

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

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