Choose your companions from the best; Who draws a bucket with the rest soon topples down the hill.
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.
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!
Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams, Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round.
The Irishman sustains himself during brief periods of joy by the knowledge that tragedy is just around the corner.
All that I have said and done, Now that I am old and ill, Turns into a question till I lie awake night after night And never get the answers right.
It takes more courage to dig deep in the dark corners of your own soul and the back alleys of your society than it does for a soldier to fight on the battlefield.
Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.
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.
There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven’t yet met.
I have often had the fancy that there is some one Myth for every man, which, if we but knew it, would make us understand all he did and thought.
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.
Everything that’s lovely is But a brief, dreamy kind of delight.
Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.
The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.
The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alone.
The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.
Cuchulain stirred, Stared on the horses of the sea, and heard The cars of battle and his own name cried; And fought with the invulnerable tide.
We can only begin to live when we conceive life as Tragedy.