William Butler Yeats Quotes (283 Quotes)

I think a man and a woman should choose each other for life, for the simple reason that a long life with all its accidents is barely enough for a man and a woman to understand each other and in this case to understand is to love.

Now that my ladders gone, I must lie down where all the ladders start, In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.

Of conflicts with others we make retorica, of conflicts with ourselves poetry

I see my life go drifting like a river From change to change I have been many things A green drop in the surge, a gleam of light Upon a sword, a fir tree on a hill, An old slave grinding at a heavy quern, A king sitting upon a chair of gold And all these things were wonderful and great But now I have grown nothing, knowing all. Ah Druid, Druid, how great webs of sorrow Lay hidden in that small slate-coloured thing.

The ghost of Roger Casement is beating on the door.

Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors on national taste.

Time's bitter flood will rise, Your beauty perish and be lost; For all eyes but these eyes.

Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.

Mysticism has been in the past and probably ever will be one of the great powers of the world, and it is bad scholarship to pretend the contrary. You may argue against it but you should no more treat it with disrespect than a perfectly cultivated writer would treat (say) the Catholic Church or the Church of Luther no matter how much he disliked them.

But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Those dancing days are gone.

Accursed who brings to light of day the writings I have cast away.

There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met.

And say my glory was I had such friends.

Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That's all we shall know for truth Before we grow old and die.

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.

The years like great black oxen tread the world, and God, the herdsman goads them on behind, and I am broken by their passing feet.

How can we know the dancer from the dance?

Time drops in decay,Like a candle burnt out,And the mountains and woodsHave their day, have their day

You that would judge me, do not judge alone this book or that, come to this hallowed place where my friends' portraits hang and look thereon; Ireland's history in their lineaments trace; think where man's glory most begins and ends and say my glory was I had such friends.

Be secret and exult, Because of all things known That is most difficult.

We have lit upon the gentle, sensitive mind And lost the old nonchalance of the hand Whether we have chosen chisel, pen or brush, We are but critics, or but half create.

It's certain there is no fine thing Since Adam's fall but needs much laboring.

The friends that have it I do wrong When ever I remake a song Should know what issue is at stake, It is myself that I remake.

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 honeybee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

Only God, my dear, Could love you for yourself alone And not your yellow hair.

We had fed the heart on fantasies,The heart's grown brutal from the fare.

O love is the crooked thing,There is nobody wise enoughTo find out all that is in it.

Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.

We . . . are no petty people. We are of the great stocks of Europe. We are the people of Burke we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of Parnell. We have created most of the modern literature of this country. We have created the best of its political intelligence.

And I may dine at journey's end With Landor and with Donne.

In dreams begins responsibility.

I know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love My country is Kiltartan Cross, My countrymen Kiltartan's poor.

Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds.

The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.... I have always considered myself a voice of what I believe to be a greater renaissance the revolt of the soul against the intellect.

Whence had they come The hand and lash that beat down frigid Rome What sacred drama through her body heaved When world-transforming Charlemagne was conceived.

When two close kindred meetWhat better than call a dance

Choose your companions from the best; Who draws a bucket with the rest soon topples down the hill.

It's certain that fine women eat A crazy salad with their meat.

How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart.

Land of Heart's Desire Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, time an endless song.

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.

Education is not filling a bucket but lighting a fire.

I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful. One almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking. It is all like an opera.

The woods of Arcady are dead, And over is their antique joy Of old the world on dreaming fed Gray Truth is now her painted toy.

May she be granted beauty and yet not; Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught, Or hers before a looking-glass, for such, Being made beautiful overmuch, Consider beauty a sufficient end, Lose natural kindness and maybe; The heart-revealing intimacy; That chooses right, and never find a friend.

A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and unstinting has been naught.

The unpurged images of day recede The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song After great cathedral gong.

We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding something outside us.