William Butler Yeats's Quotes

But was there ever dog that praised his fleas?

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

How can we know the dancer from the dance?

I am of a healthy long lived race, and our minds improve with age.

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.

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

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

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.

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

An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick, unless soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing for every tatter in its mortal dress.

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.

Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought - asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation.

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.

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.

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 wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful. One almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking. It is all like an opera.

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

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

But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

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

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

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

Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame!

All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions.

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

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.

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

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

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

In dreams begins responsibility.

Come away, O human child: To the waters and the wild with a fairy, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

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

You that would judge me, do not judge alone this book or that, come to this hallowed place where my friends' portraits hang and look thereon; Ireland's history in their lineaments trace; think where man's glory most begins and ends and say my glory was I had such friends.

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.

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

The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.

Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.

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.

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

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

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.

Now we are using the body scanner to scan the pilots. They became the dangerous people of this country?

Stop relying only on technology.Technology can help the qualified, well-trained human being but cannot replace him.

There is no comparison between the training here and the training in Israel.

We have an illusion of security, we don't have security.

After Lockerbie, everyone thought, now we've learned the lesson of how to be proactive instead of being reactive. Unfortunately, September 11 came and we know the result. Thousands of people lost their lives. Security totally failed, not at one airport, at three different airports around the country.

As the head of security for an airline, I can't ask my passengers to risk their lives and jump on a terrorist. This is why we need air marshals on every flight.

Realize that a Muslim will know that his wife was seen naked in this machine. You know what would be the reaction?... Terrible. I believe there's technology out there that can identify bomb-type materials without necessarily, overly invading our privacy.

There is only so much negotiating and maneuvering that can be done while the aircraft is under siege in mid-air. Therefore, the best way to put a stop to hijacking is by having high levels of security implemented by qualified and trained personnel both on the ground and in the air.

They can argue whatever they want. The problem is, when you interview every passenger, during the interviews you are looking for - you profile - you do profiling, to find the suspicious ones and put them out from the rest of the passengers.

We know that the airports are not protected as they should be protected. The terminals are public areas, wide open - anyone can go and walk at any terminal he wants.

We need to put undercover security armed people at the curbside of the terminal with the uniform of policemen. We need to protect the terminal. We need to protect the security checkpoint, the gate, the aircraft, the perimeter.

Why we cannot build a system like El Al to be proactive. Why do we have only to react? The shoe bomber - reaction? Take off your shoes. The Nigerian - the body scanner is a result of the Nigerian guy.

And this is one of the major questions of our lives: how we keep boundaries, what permission we have to cross boundaries, and how we do so.

I don't think that when Zionism began there was a claim that we were losing - even in part - our capacity to contribute to other peoples.

Intimate relationships are a gold mine for literature to explore, to understand, to describe.

The most difficult and complicated part of the writing process is the beginning.

Traveling is one expression of the desire to cross boundaries.

We must see what in the Israeli identity - in the Israeli - we can give to other people rather than speaking so often of taking, expanding territory.

One of the dreams of Zionism was to be a bridge. Instead, we are creating exclusion between the East and the West instead of creating bridges; we are contributing to the conflict between East and West by our stupid desire to have more.

So with truth - there is a certain moment when one can say, this is the truth and here I put a dot, a stop, and I go to another thing. A judge has to put an end to a deliberation. But for a historian, there's never an end to the past. It can go on and on and on.

The question of boundaries is a major question of the Jewish people because the Jews are the great experts of crossing boundaries. They have a sense of identity inside themselves that doesn't permit them to cross boundaries with other people.

The weapon of suicide bombing is so desperate that you aren't even left with the possibility of taking revenge or punishing anyone; the terrorist is killed along with his victims, his blood mixing with theirs.

We always knew how to honor fallen soldiers. They were killed for our sake, they went out on our mission. But how are we to mourn a random man killed in a terrorist attack while sitting in a cafe? How do you mourn a housewife who got on a bus and never returned?