One man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
Wine enters through the mouth, Love, the eyes. I raise the glass to my mouth, I look at you, I sigh.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
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.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds.
Any fool can fight a winning battle, but it needs character to fight a losing one, and that should inspire us; which reminds me that I dreamed the other night that I was being hanged, but was the life and soul of the party.
We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.
What can be shown? What true love be? All could be known or shown If Time were but gone.
Even the wisest man grows tense With some sort of violence Before he can accomplish fate, Know his work or choose his mate. Poet and sculptor, do the work, Nor let the modish painter shirk.
Our own acts are isolated and one act does not buy absolution for another.
It is so many years before one can believe enough in what one feels even to know what the feeling is.
An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick.
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.
Where there is nothing, there is God.
Why should we honour those that die upon the field of battle? A man may show as reckless a courage in entering into the abyss of himself.
Cast your mind on other days that we in coming days may be still the indomitable Irishry.
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.
Accursed who brings to light of day the writings I have cast away.
Myself I must remake.