William Butler Yeats Quotes
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Everything that's lovely is But a brief, dreamy kind of delight.
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When I clamber to the heights of sleep, Or when I grow excited with wine, suddenly I meet your face.
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Even when the poet seems most himself . . . he is never the bundle of accident and incoherence that sits down to breakfast; he has been reborn as an idea, something intended, complete.
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All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions.
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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?
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The falcon cannot hear the falconer
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A drunkard is a dead man And all dead men are drunk.
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I know of the leafy paths that the witches take Who come with their crowns of pearl and their spindles of wool, And their secret smile, out of the depths of the lake.
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People are responsible for their opinions, but Providence is responsible for their morals.
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A poet is a good citizen turned inside out.
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All the wild-witches, those most notable ladies For all their broom-sticks and their tears, Their angry tears, are gone.
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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?
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I agree about Shaw - he is haunted by the mystery he flouts. He is an atheist who trembles in the haunted corridor.
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The world being illusive, one must be deluded in some way if one is to triumph in it.
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Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before.
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Style, personality - deliberately adopted and therefore a mask - is the only escape from the hot-faced bargainers and money-changers.
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O heart the winds have shaken, the unappeasable host Is comelier than candles at Mother Mary's feet.
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Some burn damp faggots, others may consume The entire combustible world in one small room.
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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.
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We poets would die of loneliness but for women, and we choose our men friends that we may have somebody to talk about women with. Letter to Olivia Shakespeare, 1936
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A daughter of a King of Ireland, heard A voice singing on a May Eve like this, And followed half awake and half asleep, Until she came into 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. And she is still there, busied with a dance Deep in the dewy shadow of a wood, Or where stars walk upon a mountain-top.
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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.
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For men were born to pray and save: Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave.
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When I play on my fiddle in Dooney Folk dance like a wave on the sea.