 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. |
| 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. |
| An intellectual hatred is the worst. |
| 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 am still of opinion that only two topics can be of the least interest to a serious and studious mood - sex and the dead. |
| 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. |
| We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry. |
| If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise. |
| Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people. |
| There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met. |
| The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time. |
| Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking. |
| How can we know the dancer from the dance? |
| The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. |
| Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice? |
| The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alone. |
| We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding something outside us. |
| 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. |
| Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. |
| 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. |
