“Think where man's glory most begins and endsAnd say my glory was I had such friends.”

“Now as to magic. It is surely absurd to hold me “weak” or otherwise because I choose to persist in a study which I decided deliberately four or five years ago to make, next to my poetry, the most important pursuit of my life…If I had not made magic my constant study I could not have written a single word of my Blake book [The Works of William Blake, with Edwin Ellis, 1893], nor would The Countess Kathleen [stage play, 1892] have ever come to exist. The mystical life is the center of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.”

“Brown Penny I WHISPERED, 'I am too young,'And then, 'I am old enough';Wherefore I threw a pennyTo find out if I might love.'Go and love, go and love, young man,If the lady be young and fair.'Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,I am looped in the loops of her hair.O love is the crooked thing,There is nobody wise enoughTo find out all that is in it,For he would be thinking of loveTill the stars had run awayAnd the shadows eaten the moon.Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,One cannot begin it too soon.”

“PoliticsHow can I, that girl standing there,My attention fixOn Roman or on RussianOr on Spanish politics?Yet here's a travelled man that knowsWhat he talks about,And there's a politicianThat has read and thought,And maybe what they say is trueOf war and war's alarms,But O that I were young againAnd held her in my arms!”

“When I think of life as struggle with the Daimon who would ever set us to the hardest work among those not impossible, I understand why there is a deep enmity between a man and his destiny, and why a man loves nothing but his destiny.”

“Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.”

“THOUGH you are in your shining days,Voices among the crowdAnd new friends busy with your praise,Be not unkind or proud,But think about old friends the most:Time's bitter flood will rise,Your beauty perish and be lostFor all eyes but these eyes.”