“I balanced all, brought all to mind, the years to come seemed waste of...” — William Butler Yeats Quote

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.

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.

Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams, Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round.

Irish poets, learn your trade, sing whatever is well made, scorn the sort now growing up all out of shape from toe to top.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

Deep down, no one really believes they have a right to live. But this death sentence generally stays cosily tucked away, hidden beneath the difficulty of living. If that difficulty is removed from time to time, death is suddenly there, unintelligibly.

Life comes to the miners out of their deaths, and death out of their lives.

You know, the purpose of reconciliation is to avoid the filibuster. The filibuster is an effort to talk something to death.

I want away to the house of death, to my father under the low, clay roof.

I'm not afraid to die.