W. B. Yeats

The friends that have it I do wrong Whenever I remake a song, Should know what beauty is, for no good Denies a stranger in a wood.

I write it out in a verse— MacDonagh and MacBride And Connolly and Pearse Now and in time to be, Wherever green is worn, Are changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.

The soul is a terrible thing to look at.

One must be an Irish writer, and then, if one is a good writer, one is a world writer.

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

The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not.

I have been a long time coming to this, but I have come to it at last.

The world is a dream, and we are the dreamers.

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

No man can be a good citizen who is not a good son, a good brother, a good husband, a good father.

I have believed for many years that the great poet is a man who has a great deal of common sense.

The imagination is not a State: it is the human existence itself.

The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

I have been in love with the impossible for a long time.

The greatest masterpieces were once only pigments on a palette.

A poet is by the very nature of his calling a man who lives in a world of his own.

What is the use of a book without pictures or conversations?

The more you know, the more you know you don't know.

I have been a man of many moods, and I have been a man of many thoughts.

The only thing that matters is the work.