“A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains All that man is, All mere complexities, The fury and the mire of human veins.”

— William Butler Yeats, The Winding Stair and Other Poems, 1933; "Byzantium"

About William Butler Yeats

1865 – 1939

Irish poet and Nobel laureate in Literature (1923).

“An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick, unless soul clap its hands and sing.”

“In dreams begin responsibilities.”

“Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?”

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

“It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?”

“In theory there is nothing to hinder our following what we are taught; but in life there are many things to draw us aside.”

“If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces.”

“That which makes the man no worse than he was makes his life no worse: it has no power to harm, without or within.”

“Always take the short cut; and that is the rational one. Therefore say and do everything according to soundest reason.”