If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people
together to collect wood and don’t assign them
tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for
the endless immensity of the sea.

Necessity knows no rules.

We dance around in a ring and suppose.
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off.
A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn’t see me at all, but I’ll bet a month hasn’t gone by since that I haven’t thought of that girl.

Everything that I know…
I know only because I love.

I butter from nine to five and then I change into a butterfly and go ahead with poems.

Behind every great man

there’s a great woman.

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

I like people too much or not at all.

Leve, leve, muito leve,
Um vento muito leve passa,
E vai-se, sempre muito leve.
E eu não sei o que penso
Nem procuro sabê-lo.