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Yajnavalkya (fl. ca. BCE 500)
Revered Vedic sage

Some people do not eat cow meat. I do so, provided it's tender.
-- Yajnavalkya, confessing to a particular weakness for beef, contrary to the what the ruling Hindu party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, would have the public believe, from Dwijendra Narayan Jha, The Myth of the Holy Cow (2002), a book that is causing furor similar to that caused by Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, quoted from Emily Eakin, "Holy Cow a Myth? An Indian Finds the Kick Is Real" (The New York Times: August 17, 2002)

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
Irish poet

Once every people in the world believed that trees were divine, and could take a human or grotesque shape and dance among the shadows; and that deer, and ravens and foxes, and wolves and bears, and clouds and pools, almost all things under the sun and moon, and the sun and moon, were not less divine and changeable. They saw in the rainbow the still-bent bow of a god thrown down in his negligence; they heard in the thunder the sound of his beaten water jar, or the tumult of his chariot wheels; and when a sudden flight of wild ducks, or of crows, passed over their heads, they thought they were gazing at the dead hastening to their rest....
-- William Butler Yeats, quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

Once you attempt legislation upon religious grounds, you open the way for every kind of intolerance and religious persecution.
-- William Butler Yeats, remarks on the adoption of the Irish Constitution of 1937, quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

For how can you compete
Being honour bred, with one
Who, were it proved he lies,
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbour's eyes?
-- William Butler Yeats, from "To a Friend whose Work has come to Nothing"

Things fall apart;
     the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy
     is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide
     is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence
     is drowned;
The best lack all conviction,
     while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
-- William Butler Yeats, from "The Second Coming" (1921), thanks to Laird Wilcox, ed, "The Degeneration of Belief"

Under bare Ben Bulben's head
In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid...
On limestone quarried near the spot
By his command these words are cut:
Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by.
-- William Butler Yeats, Yeates's epitaph, quoted from Encarta Book of Quotations

The Subtle Fulmination of the Encircled Sea

Please Feel Free
to Grab a Quote
(or Maybe Three)

Grab some quotes to embellish your web site,
to use as filler for your group's newsletter,
or to add force to your Letters to the Editor.

Use them to introduce the chapters of a book or
accent the index or margins of a special project.

Poster your wall!    Graffiti your (own) fence.
Sticker your car!!
Poster your wall.    Graffiti your (own) fence!!!

That's what this list is for!
That's why I made it!

In using this resource, however, keep in mind that
it's someone's life's work, a hedge against old age.

If you decide to build your own online
collection, then find some new material!
Dig up quips that haven't yet been posted!

There's something to be said
for doing your own work.