William Butler Yeats Quotes
-
A strange thing surely that my Heart, when love had come unsought Upon the Norman upland or in that poplar shade, Should find no burden but itself and yet should be worn out. It could not bear that burden and therefore it went mad.
-
The world being illusive, one must be deluded in some way if one is to triumph in it.
-
I believe... that our memories are part of one great memory, the memory of Nature herself.
-
People are responsible for their opinions, but Providence is responsible for their morals.
-
I thought no more was needed Youth to prolong Than dumb-bell and foil To keep the body young. O who could have foretold That the heart grows old?
-
And God, the herdsman, goads them on behind.
-
The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.
-
When I play on my fiddle in Dooney Folk dance like a wave on the sea.
-
now I bring full-flavoured wine out of a barrel found Where seven Ephesian topers slept and never knew When Alexander's empire passed, they slept so sound.
-
Before The World Was Made If I make the lashes dark and the eyes more bright and the lips more scarlet, or ask if all be right from mirror after mirror, no vanity's displayed: I'm looking for the face I had before the world was made. What if I look upon a man as though on my beloved, and my blood be cold the while and my heart unmoved? Why should he think me cruel or that he is betrayed? I'd have him love the thing that was before the world was made.
-
Life moves out of a red flare of dreams Into a common light of common hours, Until old age brings the red flare again.
-
Shakespeare cared little for the State, the source of all our judgments, apart from its shows and splendours, its turmoils and battles, its flamings out of the uncivilized heart.
-
It is not permitted to a man, who takes up pen or chisel, to seek originality, for passion is his only business, and he cannot but mould or sing after a new fashion because no disaster is like another.
-
If there's no hatred in a mind Assault and battery of the wind Can never tear the linnet from the leaf
-
A statesman is an easy man, he tells his lies by rote. A journalist invents his lies, and rams them down your throat. So stay at home and drink your beer and let the neighbors vote.
-
Much did I rage when young, Being by the world oppressed, But now with flattering tongue It speeds the parting guest.
-
What can books of men that wive In a dragon-guarded land, Paintings of the dolphin-drawn Sea-nymphs in their pearly wagons Do, but awake a hope to live...?
-
So long as all is ordered for attack, and that alone, leaders will instinctively increase the number of enemies that they may give their followers something to do.
-
O sweet everlasting Voices, be still; Go to the guards of the heavenly fold And bid them wander obeying your will, Flame under flame, till Time be no more.
-
Laughter not time destroyed my voice And put that crack in it, And when the moon's pot-bellied I get a laughing fit.
-
The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.
-
Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice?
-
Some burn damp faggots, others may consume The entire combustible world in one small room.
-
Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses.