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I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.

William Butler Yeats

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

William Butler Yeats

Education

Fire

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.

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

How can we know the dancer from the dance?

William Butler Yeats

Dance

How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart.

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

William Butler Yeats

Age

Race

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.

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

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.

William Butler Yeats

Man

But was there ever dog that praised his fleas?

William Butler Yeats

Fleas

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

William Butler Yeats

Men

Old

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.

William Butler Yeats

Love