William Butler Yeats Quotes (283 Quotes)


    The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.

    we can make our minds so still like water. That beings gather about us to see their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer perhaps even with a fiercer life because of silence.

    When you are old and gray and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book and slowly read, and dream of the soft look your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.


    O but we dreamed to mend Whatever mischief seemed To afflict mankind, but now That winds of winter blow Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.


    One had a lovely face, And two or three had charm, But charm and face were in vain. Because the mountain grass Cannot keep the form Where the mountain hare has lain.


    All the wild witches, those most noble ladies, For all their broomsticks and their tears, Their angry tears, are gone.

    Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light, I would spread the cloths under your feet But I, being poor, have only my dreams I have s


    A woman can be proud and stiffWhen on love intentBut Love has pitched his mansion inThe place of excrementFor nothing can be sole or wholeThat has not been rent.

    Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot. Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.

    In wise love each defines the secret self of the other, and refusing to believe in the mere daily self, creates a mirror where the lover or the beloved sees an image to copy in daily life for love also creates the Mask.

    Grant me an old man's frenzy, Myself must I remake Till I am Timon and Lear Or that William Blake Who beat upon the wall Till Truth obeyed his call.

    When such as I cast out remorse So great a sweetness flows into the breast We must laugh and we must sing, We are blest by everything, Everything we look upon is blest.

    Until the axle break That keeps the stars in their round, And hands hurl in the deep The banners of East and West, And the girdle of light is unbound, Your breast will not lie by the breast Of your beloved in sleep

    No expectation fails there,No pleasing habit ends,No man grows old, no girl grows cold,But friends walk by friends.

    All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart, The heavy steps of the plowman, splashing the wintry mold, Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.

    Consume my heart away, sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is, and gather me Into the artifice of eternity.

    It is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am of the opinion of the ancient Jewish book which says ''there is no wisdom without leisure.''

    I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.'

    I said, 'A line will take us hours maybe Yet if it does not seem a moment's though Our stitching and unstitching has been naught. Better go down upon your marrow-bones And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones.'

    The hour of the waning of love has beset us,And weary and worn are our sad souls nowLet us part, ere the season of passion forget us,With a kiss and a tear on thy drooping brow.

    At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit.


    Fair and foul are near of kin And fair needs foul,' I cried. 'My friends are gone, but that's a truth Nor grave nor bed denied.'


    Odor of blood when Christ was slain Made all Platonic tolerance vain And vain all Doric discipline.


    Supreme art is a traditional statement of certain heroic and religious truth, passed on from age to age, modified by individual genius, but never abandoned

    I have read somewhere that in the Emperor's palace at Byzantium was a tree made of gold and silver, and artificial birds that sang.

    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.

    O what fine thought we had because we thought that the worst rogues and rascals had died out.

    Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye, In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones, And all their helms of silver hovering

    One should not lose one's temper unless one is certain of getting more and more angry to the end.

    What were all the world's alarms To mighty Paris when he found Sleep upon a golden bed That first dawn in Helen's arms.

    I believe in the practice and philosophy of what we have agreed to call magic, and what I must call the evocation of spirits, though I do not know what they are, in the power of creating magic illusions in the visions of truth in the depths of the minds when the eyes are closed.


    Irish poets, learn your trade, sing whatever is well made, scorn the sort now growing up all out of shape from toe to top.

    A shudder in the loins engenders there The broken wall, the burning roof and tower And Agamemnon dead.


    That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees Those dying generationsat their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unaging intellect.

    See how the sacred old flamingoes come,Painting with shadow all the marble stepsAged and wise, they seek their wonted perchesWithin the temple, devious walking, madeTo wander by their melancholy minds.

    Poor men have grown to be rich men,And rich men grown to be poor again,And I am running to Paradise.

    The night can sweat with terror as before We pieced our thoughts into philosophy, And planned to bring the world under a rule, Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.

    No art can conquer the people alonethe people are conquered by an ideal of life upheld by authority.


    The Land of Faery, Where nobody gets old and godly and grave, Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue.

    I agree about Shaw - he is haunted by the mystery he flouts. He is an atheist who trembles in the haunted corridor.

    I made my song a coat Covered with embroideries Out of old mythologies From heel to throat But the fools caught it, Wore it in the world's eyes As though they'd wrought it. Song, let them take it, For there's more enterprise In walking naked.


    Related Authors


    Ralph Waldo Emerson - John Keats - Edgar Allan Poe - e. e. cummings - Alexander Pope - Thomas Moore - Octavio Paz - Lucretius - Geoffrey Chaucer - Elizabeth Barrett Browning


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